Ugly Plant in a Big World
by Jillian W
Summary: STORY 4/PREQUEL: Some children are born alone, and some are not children at all. Follow the story of one such creature upon the harsh soil of Gunsmoke. Not your usual Trigun fanfic; will not focus on Trigun characters, but rather upon their world.
1. Little Creature

Come second sunrise on Gunsmoke, Greta trudged out to her family's nearby barn to feed the animals. She began breathing through her mouth, prepared for the stink. You could always smell the stink of the pigs. If it weren't for the thieves, maybe they could've built the barn further from their home, and downwind.

Humming to herself, she unlocked the barn door and entered to begin her chores. Effort used to heave heavy bags of feed into troughs caused interruptions in her somber tune. Greta hummed something, she barely noticed what. But something felt odd.

There was an echo. The barn was too full and insulated to echo. She stood, leaning against a toma stable, craning her head round, waiting in silence. Finally shrugging it off, she tucked a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear and tightened the ribbon securing her ponytail. Resuming to hum, she could swear there was an echo as she lifted the slop bucket to the squealing delight of the pigs. The slop hit the low trough within the pig enclosure with a wet slap.

Greta gasped, nearly falling over.

"Jesus Mary 'n' Joseph!" she cried out, clutching at her chest. "How'd you get in here?"

The bundled form in the corner was silent, its only response to clutch at itself in the same way. Thin, dirty legs and arms were the only parts visible from the edges of cloth that used to white, and used to be a sheet.

"My God, child, you scared me near to death! And what a MESS you are!"

It lifted its dirty fingers up into the hood of the cloth, touching its face as it began to hoarsely hum the tune it'd just learned from Greta. Mimicking the notes, it crawled the few feet over to the edge of the pig trough and reached through the wire fencing to grab for some food. The bits and oozy gook came back to its mouth and Greta sighed to realize it was eating the slop.

On this desert planet, this unforgiving wasteland, life was not possible outside of the cities and towns, and these were suited for life only thanks to plants. There was a single, small plant at the edge of this town, Haven, where Greta's family resided. Seeing pitiful castaways like this one would break her heart, were it not so common.

Folk on Gunsmoke couldn't afford charity; not much anyway. Greta could hardly offer this poor soul a home or a meal, let alone spare enough water to clean up. This one, this one was obviously touched, God bless it, couldn't talk or wear clothes, it seemed.

"Alright, then, you know I ought to kick you out, little one," Greta insisted, assuming a booming tone. "How old are you, now, 12, 10 years old?"

The huddled mass continued to suck down the smelly stuff, but held one gunk-coated hand out, holding up one finger. One.

Sighing aloud, Greta shook her head. Wow, this one was a dim lamp. "There's a shovel here," she noted, grabbing one nearby and giving it a shake. "You see this. Now, you take this here and shovel the poop and messy dirt out the trap there," she added, bending to point at a hinged flap built into the wall. "When I come by, I unlock this door and I let you out so you can take the shovel and bury the poop pile. Got it? You do this and I'll let you stay."

She got no response.

Greta made for the door, key in hand. "If'n there's any poo in the barn when I come by for the evening roam, I'll be having to kick you out, dear. And by God, if you do a thing to the livestock…" she muttered as she locked up the barn secure for the day.

She didn't think it heard her, but it did. It sucked down all the sustenance it could and then went to lift the heavy shovel. Its thin, weak, little arms couldn't but lift it enough to lean atop a shoulder, then slowly scoop up some feces here and there. Breathing heavily, it labored to do as the lady'd asked, to get the stuff out the hatch. The animals would poop on the cleaned floor, so it stopped scooping when it couldn't shovel anymore and rested upon the straw. It'd have to wake up to finish with the poop later.

The journey through the desert had been harsh and exhausting, but it was over. The food and the bed weren't as good, but everything else would be better.

It didn't like to live in the bulb; it was hot and heavy and it made its body do weird things. When it got out of the bulb it got to be in a room with the people it saw from the bulb, but the people only talked to each other and only smiled to each other. The people played music for themselves and left books near her that they were reading, and they didn't mean it to know them, but it did and it liked them. When its eyes adjusted to the light and its body let it move on the floor, it liked the world it was in well enough. And it saw how beautiful the insides of things were, the insides of the people, of frogs, of cats, because the pages in the books showed it was so. The people were standing outside its room but it heard them, heard them say they wanted to see her insides. Sure, it's own insides were maybe very pretty, too, but the books said that you can only see the inside when the thing is dead, and it wasn't really wanting to die yet. It thought maybe it should go, but it couldn't say so to the people because its teeth cut its tongue so it didn't talk. It wrote a note to tell them, but it hadn't written before so the note wasn't as pretty to read as the words in the books. It slipped out when the people were away, and it wanted to take the books but they were heavy, so it took a sheet from its bed because it was soft. It walked into the desert that didn't look like it ended and it came upon this town and it crawled through a broken board to get in this barn.

Smiling and humming, it held its hands up to cover its mouth so its teeth wouldn't be scary. It saw its reflection before and it was pretty sure that the things about it that made it a lot different than the people were the things that made the people not smile at it, not talk to it. So it hid its things under the sheet, the things that were different. And it worked! This lady, she was scared at first, but then she was talking to it like it was one of the people! And music came from her, music that it made come from it, too. If it could be one of the people, and all it had to do was smell the dirty things and scoop the excrement from the animals and eat the animal food and sleep on scratchy straw, it would be better than being beautiful and dead.


	2. What a Face

The barn smelled better than it had, that was certain. Cleaning was the worst chore of all, and she was glad to be rid of it. The only cost was some pig slop, so what did it matter? When she went to feed the animals, and to let them out to roam, she went on and on about this and that, the gossip and the aches she had when she woke in the morning, little things that her husband tired of hearing. Greta would've felt silly talking only to herself, which she thought she likely was doing, considering the apparent deficit of the barn-dweller; nevertheless it felt nice to be as chatty as she liked.

It was always hunched over, and it stood and walked at an odd angle. From beneath its ratty cloak, Greta thought this child must have a hump, and a pretty big one at that. But it never spoke, just hummed sometimes, and it did as it was supposed to without doing any wrong.

She told her girl-friend across the way about her hired help a good time later, after the child in the barn was somewhat trusted, and she didn't fear harm from gossip any longer. The children didn't need to know, though, because they wouldn't understand. Greta told her about the unfortunate and Yan's immediate, rushed whisper of a reply was, "Is the child so terribly ugly?"

Greta shrugged, sipping at her tea as they sat on Yan's porch. "I'm assuming so. Wretched, it is, with its hump. My husband saw it burying the pile outside the other day, he just screwed up his face and said he didn't want to look at it."

"Greta, dear," Yan whispered, furrowing her brow, "Haven't you seen its face? Can't you tell if it's a boy or a girl or something?"

Thinking, Greta realized she didn't know. She hadn't cared. Shuddering, she knew that if she saw its face and it was as she imagined it, she'd have a much harder time allowing it to stay. "Oh, I wish you hadn't asked; now I'll have to find out," Greta whined aloud, nestling her teacup miserably into its saucer.

Yan set her cup down as well, glancing about to see that their children were involved in a game of some sort, and could surely be without their supervision for a moment. Grinning, she whispered, "I'll go with. My father was a butcher, after all, so I can stomach quite a-"

"Oh, right now?" Greta murmured, wringing her hands dramatically. "Well, you look and I'll keep my eyes shut."

---

Greta let them into the barn and stepped about to find the child. There was a faint grinding sound coming from the back, as there usually was. In the dim light, she saw it rising slowly from a rest upon the straw. Its hands dropped down from inside its hood, holding a hoof file that it carefully placed back upon its hook. It wasn't hurting the file, so Greta didn't mind whatever it was doing with the thing. "Come here, child," Greta called, as she often did, but without the warmth the phrase held when she used it towards her own children.

As the little creature shuffled forward, Yan shot Greta a shocked look. Yan had thought Greta's description of the hump's size was just another exaggeration – it clearly wasn't.

"Now, you know I've been awful generous to you, letting you stay here for weeks, now. But if I'm to let you stay, you'll need to let me and my friend here see your face," Greta explained, crossing her arms as she stood just behind Yan.

The child did nothing, either weighing the options or unable to understand them at all. But after a pregnant pause, it began to trudge around the women, for the door. It was, as always, bent over at an angle due to the hump between its shoulder blades.

"Well, goodness, all this kindness I show you, and you leave without saying thank you? We only want to see your face. No need to be shy about it."

"I grew up 'round the butcher's shop," Yan chimed in, "Whatever you're looking like, I promise I've seen worse."

"Yeah, and there's Nelson, up the road, he lost his nose and part of his cheek to that infection, we grew up around him," Greta added, realizing that her curiosity was getting the better of her.

Yan shuffled over to bend near the dirty, smelly thing, and she leaned as close as she could bear to. "We have kids your age," she added, guessing the thing's age to be about what Greta thought, about 10, "we're mothers. We like to see kids' faces. Not all the faces folk have are nice to look at, they come in all shapes and colors and things. So why not just lift that up from around your face a little and give Aunt Yan and Aunt Greta here a peek, ok?"

The little hunched figure shifted, swing itself side to side slightly, as children do when thinking. Its dirty fingers touched the sides of its hood and hesitantly lifted the cloth, just to its eyes.

Greta tried to distinguish the expression on silent Yan's face. Was it shock, horror? It seemed more like awe! She stepped gingerly behind her friend and stooped down to see into the child's hood.

Creamy, pale skin was marked with smears of filth and a few little sores, but was otherwise smooth and fair. The little mouth was pursed tightly shut, with lips the color of ripe strawberries. A tangle of muddy but blonde hair fell between its eyes, large, lovely eyes, framed with long lashes, sparkling with a hue of green and blue mixed together. Greta crossed herself as she breathed in sharply. A little soap and water, and this was the most beautiful child she'd ever seen!

The child's eyes darted around nervously. They were staring at it, mouths hanging open in an expression that could have bad or good. But it realized that the attention itself was a good thing, and it felt a smile coming upon its face. Its dirty fingers came up to cover the smile, as its eyes darted between the two women's faces.

"What a pretty face," Yan murmured despite herself, eyes stuck to the child's.

"Darling, why would you hide a pretty face like that?" Greta asked, hushed, almost reaching out to touch it, but pulling away from the smell and the grime. "You shouldn't hide it. Now can you show your Aunt Yan if you're a boy or a girl? Show me the part between your legs, ok?"

It wondered if it was a boy or a girl, too, whatever that meant, so it did as asked. It closed its mouth and let its hands tug up the folds of the cloth about it, waited for Yan to register the answer, and let the drapings fall back to cover it.

"See there, you're a pretty girl," Yan exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "It makes sense to cover up your hump, darling, but there's no need to cover up your whole self!"

The little girl was filled with joy at this, and, inhibitions forgotten, clapped her hands together and hopped up and down happily (made awkward by her constantly-bent over posture). Her cloth remained upon her only thanks to a couple of knots at the shoulder, but the hood part fell back against her hump. Eyes squinting from her wide open grin, she was so pleased that she'd no longer need to cover up like that.

With a thud, Greta fainted onto the barn floor. Yan would have checked on her friend, but was too shocked to move.

The child was confused, but not saddened by their reaction, since it was something she hadn't seen before. The people at the plant place twisted their faces up at her, they didn't fall down or let their mouths hang open. She shuffled back to the wall to grab the file and moved back towards the women, continuing to file horizontally at her teeth as her eyes darted around.

Greta came to and was crossing herself feverishly. "Let's go, Yan," she choked out, face pale.

Yan nodded slightly and shuffled away, friends leaning against each other, but her eyes did not leave the child.

The girl began to feel that she had done something wrong, and tears welled in her eyes as she tugged her hood back to cover her head with her free hand. She watched the women leave and squinted when sunlight burst momentarily through the door. Her back hurt, as did her chest, and she sobbed as well as a child with all-pointed teeth could sob as she crawled back to the straw nest. Sensitive, pointed ears with piqued hearing could just make out the excited words of the women as they walked from the barn, until the sound faded and was replaced by whimpers.


	3. Shank You

"Your mom just fell, she'll be ok," Yan insisted to the three concerned little boys who'd paused from play in her front yard when they'd come back. Yan supported Greta on her shoulder and led her to a chair.

The boys shrugged, and proceeded to run back toward Yan's boys.

"What should I do, what should I do?" Greta was asking.

Yan breathed out heavily. "Not what I expected."

"God, is she a demon?" Greta whined, crossing herself again. "Fangs!"

"A cross between a demon and an angel, maybe," Yan murmured. "Or she's just another poor deformed child."

Greta shook her head. "What should I do, Yan?"

"Well, I'd sleep on it first. She's got a chance at life, where she is; don't want to be hasty. What else is there for a poor creature like that? The girl's useful to you, and you know she didn't much have the eyes of a touched child, really, she could probably learn to do other chores." She stood and retrieved some ratty clothing from the front closet. "Here's some of my boys' things, they don't need them. Give the girl something to wear, for me?"

Greta stared down at the stained, patched clothing on the table before her. She had no reply, and sat stoic, staring, until Yan came out with fresh tea and changed the subject back to the week's gossip.

---

The animals hadn't been fed, watered, or exercised since the morning before, so when Greta awoke at first sunrise and the situation flooded back into memory, she was filled with dread. Dawdling all she could with breakfast and prepping her family for the day, second sunrise come and gone, she could put it off no longer.

Warily, she glanced about to see the girl curled on her usual pile of straw, and slowly she began to arrange the feed. She did not sing or hum or chat as she had before.

Soft, wet sniffling sounds came from the bundled, huddled form of the girl.

The floors were clean, remarkably so.

Coming closer to her, to slop the pigs, Greta noticed blood dried onto the hoof file hung on the wall. She frowned, picturing the child rubbing it against her teeth until her hands bled.

The girl shuffled a few steps toward Greta, keeping her distance, hood back just to see her eyes and nose. Those gorgeous blue-green eyes gazed up at Greta.

If the girl was not a danger, if she was helping, trying, and it really seemed she was, Greta couldn't throw her out.

Thinking about the old clothes Yan had insisted she take, Greta wondered what to do? She'd be drawing the family's weekly bath tomorrow evening. The girl could use the water when they were through; it was going to be thrown out then anyway. "I want you to nod your head, like this, when you understand what I tell you. Do you understand?"

The girl nodded, eyes glued to the women towering over her.

"Right now, I'm letting you eat the feed and stay in the barn because you do things for me, with the poop."

She nodded again.

"Well, I'll do more for you if you do more for me. Like, I'm going to give you clothes to wear and let you take the last bath. And for that, you need to do more for me. You need to do what I tell you to do."

The girl waited, then nodded.

"I'm going to teach you how to use the pump and water the animals," Greta explained, opening the barn door.

Turning from the harsh light, the girl nodded and followed.

"Shank you."

Greta stopped in her tracks, startled by the quiet, hissing words. "Oh my God, you can talk."

The girl squinted up at her as she stood barefoot in the sand. "Shank you," she repeated, hiding her smiling mouth behind her hands as the words awkwardly formed. "Shank you."

"You're welcome," Greta replied hurriedly, "and you only have to say it once. Now come along, girl."

---

"Holy shit!" Jon whispered to his two older brothers as they peeked round the edge of their house to see their mother and the odd figure they often saw helping their mother, and he couldn't believe it, but their mother was apparently about to bathe the figure like she bathed her own sons! And they were going to get to see the stranger naked!

"Is that a girl?" Marcus, the youngest, asked as he peered out, watching as the figure took off its rags.

"It's a girl because it doesn't have a willy!" Sean chimed in, proud. The Gordon boys had taught them how to spy on ladies bathing, as they'd also taught them to cuss, so they were MEN now.

"Holy shit!" Jon repeated, "she looks like a buzzard!"

The figure was rubbing grime off its nude self with the rags, pale, pale skin aglow in the sun. The boys could clearly make out a big bump of skin or something on her back, and she hunched over just like a buzzard does.

"She's got a hunchback just like old man Jones! Mom said you only get those when you're old!"

"Sean, she's not old," Marcus corrected haughtily. "She's my age."

"Yeah, looks like it," Jon agreed. "No tits yet."

Their mother had a disgusted look on her face as she helped the girl into the wash basin, probably because she smelled so bad. The girl sort of cried out when Greta dunked her head under.

The boys chuckled quietly. They each disliked getting dunked, too, but as men, they were supposed to act like it didn't bother them.

"You boys are getting a whoopin'!" came the booming, frightening voice of their mother. They ran off as quickly as they could.

Greta sighed aloud, and returned to scrubbing at the frail thing. "Keep still, this is supposed to hurt some," she insisted, referring to the way the washcloth was reddening the girl's skin. "Now listen, there are things you're supposed to know. One is, you should never let boys see you without your clothes on, because it'll make them want to mess with you."

People saw her without her clothes on every day at the plant room place before, and some of those people could have been boys. That must've been why they wanted to see her insides, because that was certainly a kind of 'messing with her.' The girl stared off in the direction the boys had been, before Greta scared them off. She winced as she was scrubbed, waiting patiently for the washing to be through.

Moments later, Greta sighed. "Now, that's the only one I'm doing. You can do it yourself the next time. There are some clothes, finish up," she instructed, handing the girl a towel to dry with as she prepared to dump the basin. Eyeing the girl from the corner of her eye, she saw that the girl was learning to clothe herself for the first time. "You need to keep clean or people can't stand the stink of you. Don't get yourself dirty and don't let the poop touch you."

The girl finished pulling on the pants and tried to button the shirt, but needed Greta's instruction to finish. It was tight against her hump, but big enough to fit alright. She hid her smile with her hands. "Shank you."

"I'm not your mother, girl," Greta announced, "You are going to take care of yourself from now on. Don't trust nobody. And learn to talk. You're supposed to talk to people or they'll think you're stupid and you don't need anybody to think you're stupid – stupid people get hurt and stolen from."

"Talk. I shoo talk," the girl mumbled with a slight hiss. "I'm not shtupish."

"Here's a present, ok? This is for you because you did a good job. You shouldn't use a file big as a hoof file, so here's a smaller one. It's yours, so you keep working on those teeth, maybe you'll get to talking like normal someday."

The girl kept one hand over her mouth and grabbed the file tight in the other. "Shank you. Shish is good."

"Don't show people your teeth and keep this tied over your ears," Greta insisted, showing her to knot a cloth round her ears like a headband. It kept her long, soft, straight blonde hair out of her face and the girl didn't mind. "Getting late, girl. Go on to the barn, I'm bound to lock up."

The girl obeyed, shuffling off to her straw. Her mind was abuzz and happy, and she wondered how she'd keep her feet clean from the sand and the dirt, and how she could eat the slop without getting it on her hands or her face.


	4. Children

"You wanna play with us?" Marcus asked with a grin missing teeth. He peeked his head through the broken board in the corner of the barn.

The girl was startled, and stared at him wide-eyed. She didn't know what he was asking.

"She's probably too stupid to talk," Jon whispered to Sean outside the barn wall.

"I'm not shtupish," the girl announced softly, standing. She crawled outside to talk more to the boys, so they would know she wasn't stupid. "I know lotsh of shingsh an' booksh an' shongsh," she listed off in her whistling little voice, shielding her eyes from the sunlight.

"Look at her teeth!" Sean marveled, bending down into her face. He reached out and pulled her lips away to get a better look, and the girl did nothing to stop him. The girl remembered that people did that a lot at the cold, clean room before, and she was supposed to let them do it.

"Cool!" Sean marveled, as did his brothers.

"Come with us," Marcus insisted, grabbing her hand and running off with her. She couldn't run, though, and tripped onto her hands. "Are you hurt?"

She stood back up and assumed her awkward posture. "Not sho fasht," she suggested, letting Marcus take her hand again to lead her at a slower pace.

"It's 'cuz of that shit on your back, isn't it," Jon grunted, shoving his hands in his pocket as he walked with Sean alongside the other two. He was embarrassed for the youngest – boys should never hold girls' hands! "Why do you have that shit there anyway?"

"You saw it, Jon, it's not poop, it's skin and stuff," Sean corrected.

"Shit means stuff, Sean, you dumbass," Jon snickered back.

"Were you born with it?" Marcus asked.

"It grew," she answered simply.

"OK, grab some rocks," Sean instructed the girl, gathering some pebbles of his own.

Marcus let go the girl's hand to grab stones. They'd led her to a quiet area just out of town, behind a ridge. All four children got a handful of stones and Jon began the game.

Reeling back and chucking them hard as they could, the boys threw the rocks at lizards skittering to and fro. They were missing, but the girl understood the game. She threw the rocks, too.

"Got one!" Jon announced, and he jogged over to his kill. He picked up the little lizard by the tail and brought it over to them with a proud smile. Laying it on the ground after they'd had a look, he went back to throwing stones.

The boys were jealous and tried harder, but the girl just stared at the lizard with her big, colorful eyes.

"What is she doing?" Jon asked impatiently.

"Itsh dead," she responded, squinting up at him. "Now you're shposhed to open it, shee itsh inshide-sh."

"What the hell'd she just say?" Jon asked, hands on hips.

"Use your pocketknife, Jon, open it up like she said," Sean insisted, bending down beside the lizard, as the rest did.

"That might be cool," Jon responded, prepping his little knife before slicing the thing open long-ways. With a few more cuts, he peeled back its belly skin.

The girl pointed and touched the guts of the thing. "Eshophogush, shtomach, liver, shmall inteshtine," she rattled off, digging her finger inside the goo. "Pretty inshide, colorsh. Kidneysh, ovariesh-"

"Huh?" Sean interrupted.

Jon smacked him behind the head. "Cuz you don't pay attention in class, dumbass."

"What's her name," Sean asked, hoping to change the subject.

"Yeah, what's your name," Marcus chimed in.

She stared at them.

"What did your mom and dad call you?" Marcus added.

"I don't have mom and dad."

"You should have a name," Jon insisted.

"Let's call her Dumbass," Sean laughed.

"What do you want for a name? What names do you know?" Marcus asked, ignoring his brother.

She thought, trying to remember names.

"You're a girl, so you need a girl name. What are some girl names?" Marcus asked his brothers.

"Vanesha," the girl mentioned. "Thatsh one."

"Yeah, it is. I don't know any Vanessa girls," Marcus reflected. "You should come to school with us. School is a place where you learn things and after you're done you're a grown up."

"She can't, she smells like pig shit," Sean interrupted.

"She smells fine now, dumbass," Jon corrected.

"They don't let girls go to school when they don't wear shoes or dresses," Sean insisted.

"Darla wears boys clothes, too," Marcus pointed out, "And she's a girl."

"She'd scare the people at school," Jon argued, staring at the pointed ears that were starting to peek out from beneath the edge of her head-scarf.

"We're not scared," Marcus countered.

"Well, maybe she can go to school. We'll take you with us, tomorrow, ok?"

Vanessa stood stoic. She wasn't sure that it was a good idea, but if school made you smarter, made you an adult, she was pretty sure she should go. "Shank you," she said seriously.

The children spoke more, mainly the boys arguing while Vanessa watched. But when the first sun began to set, she insisted to the boys that she had to go back, so that she would have the poop shoveled before their mother came for the nightly roam.

A devilish grin spread across Sean's face, and he turned to climb up the ridge, supporting his hands and feet with stones as he scaled the 10-foot thing. They'd usually walked round it.

Marcus followed, as little brothers like to do. But Marcus lost his footing half-way up and fell back. He twisted to catch himself by the hands, but only turned enough to land hard on one arm. There was a snap.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Jon cussed at Sean, who didn't seem to know what happened as he peered down from the top, and scooped Marcus up in his arms. Quick as could be, the elder boy ran off with the youngest wailing against his chest, middle boy running along in front of them (to tell mother it wasn't his fault before Jon could tell on him).

Vanessa hobbled after them as fast as she could, which wasn't very fast at all, but she could hear their footfalls and breathing disappear in the distance. She was alone, in the desert, again.


	5. Congratulations

"I didn't do it!" Sean yelled, bursting in the door as his mother was cutting roots up for dinner.

"Boy, what did you do?" she asked, knowingly, before her ears perked up to the wailing of her youngest, her dear Marcus. She ran out the door where Jon was jogging up, and pulled Marcus from his arms, toting him inside to lay him upon the sofa.

Greta's stomach twisted as she saw her son's arm, bent at an angle arms ought not bend. There was no blood, but the skin was changing color and the boy was incoherent with pain.

"He fell! I didn't do it!" Sean kept insisting.

"Sean Michael, sit in the corner! I'm going for Doctor Chang, baby, it'll be ok!" Greta called as she rushed out the door and rushed down the way.

Marcus's muffled moans filled the front room, and Sean pressed his hands against his ears. He stared angrily out the window. Moments passed, what seemed like an eternity for both boys, because the good doctor lived clear on the other side of town in a big house.

The air cooled and the second sun fixed to set itself as well when a hunched-over figure hobbled, panting, to the house, following the sound of the boy's pain.

Sean glanced over, watching the girl with skin so pale that in shadow it seemed to glow with blue, as did her hair, though in sunlight the hair was gold. Her eyes were larger in the dark and bluer, and she cautiously stepped into the house to go to Marcus's side. She gazed down at him, running her fingertips across his arm as he whimpered.

A yowl sounded in an instant, subsiding to sobs. Sean stood and turned abruptly. He saw the girl's hands on his brother's arm, saw her grip loosen from the limb as she met his eyes and suddenly rushed out. Jon passed her as he came in from the porch, wondering what had happened. Sean ran to the door and watched her hobble to the barn and crawl through the board.

His mother's prattling voice announced their return with the good doctor.

Greta, face flushed with concern, and the doctor, a stout and balding man in his late 50s, stepped inside to have a look at the boy. Doctor Chang grabbed and squeezed and lifted as Marcus cried out, and when his examination was complete, he turned to Greta with a sigh. "Ma'am, your son's arm is hardly as bad a break as you claim. He's a fracture, but not a thing's out of place."

"It was, it was," Jon murmured, leaning in to see that, indeed, the arm was as it should be, if not a little swollen.

"My boy, this arm is in fine shape," the doctor replied. "The only way an arm bent so badly can look so fine is after it's been set. So then, my boy, did you set your brother's arm just now?"

Jon looked away, thinking, as Sean grew nervous.

Greta said words of thanks but did not argue, watching the doctor splint her son's arm and instruct them on proper care and bathing, that it would be fine in a month. She asked the doctor if they could pay the cost later, because they had nary the cash to do so yet.

"Fine, then, Mrs. O'Donnell. One hundred double dollars, including the cost of follow up visits. Would have been double that if it'd needed setting, my dear. Due up at the end of next month. Good day." With that, he donned his hat and bag and stepped onto the street, dreading the long walk home.

Greta turned to cradle her son, who was only quietly crying at that point. "Your mother's eyes do play tricks on her when she's upset."

Jon spoke up, shaking his head. "Mom, it WAS, it was bent all funny, something happened-"

"I didn't do it, it was Vanessa!" Sean announced, fists at his sides. "It wasn't me!"

"And WHO is this Vanessa?" she asked

"The humpback girl in the barn! She did it! She came in after you left and she grabbed his arm and she made him scream and she ran out!" Sean babbled.

"It's true," Marcus burbled between soft sobs. "She made it straight. So, can she go to school?"

Greta glanced around at her boys and grew silent.

---

The children found Vanessa great fun. You could throw food at her, and she'd pick it out of the sand, out of her hair, and she'd eat every bit of it. She talked funny and walked funny and sat funny. Her clothes were boy's clothes and they were torn up and dirty, and she smelled like pig poop. The girls all agreed that she was ugly as could be, that her eyes were entirely too big and her teeth were monstrous, no matter how much filing she did to them. When she lost her baby teeth for her adult teeth, the new ones came in sharp as ever, making her look so weird it was hilarious! She could hear all the things you said about her no matter how quiet you were, so there was no reason to whisper, and everyone just said whatever they wanted about her. After all, she wouldn't fight you. The O'Donnell boys (except Sean, and only sometimes Jon, and Marcus was usually too weak to win) would fight the boys that did things to her, but they wouldn't fight the girls. Vanessa was the Hunch, Ugly, PooFace, to name a few. Sure, lots of the kids in their mixed-grade school were poor, and many of them smelled and dressed like Vanessa, but they looked far more normal, and found that with Vanessa around they took far less flack than before!

---

Vanessa was always in trouble with the teacher, Ms. Thornson. She never missed a point on an assignment or test, but she let the other children cheat from her work! And the girl wouldn't speak up, would only whisper when called on, from behind her hand. In truth, she creeped Ms. Thornson out terribly, and after the first month of classes with her, she didn't call on the girl at all. Still, Vanessa kept her arm raised at every prompt, thinking it all a wonderful game.

Stranger than the child's personality was her stature. Not only the hump, the deformities – the child of what had been guessed at ten years of age was growing at an alarming pace. Vanessa'd been grouped at the lowest grade to begin with, but sailed through it far too easily and was placed with the third graders, also ten years old. But a mere month later, the girl began puberty, and was through with puberty two months after that. In two months the scrawny thing had grown nearly two feet and towered over her 5'5" teacher! In two months she'd grown breasts (small though they be), was peppered with sudden acute acne, clothing replaced with donations constantly, voice cracked and deepened. All within two months.

Vanessa's hump and ears remained the same in size, and became somewhat less encroaching as she 'grew into them.' She could stand upright a little better, still not perfectly. All in all, the child was a terrible mess.

Ms. Thornson grew weary of worrying about this wretched thing, tired of the confusion her rapid growth made upon the class structure. She 'graduated' the girl to grade 12, the final grade, by the end of the puberty (she looked nearly that age as it was, almost a woman). The middle-aged, overworked, divorcee teacher did not want to figure out the girl's age or intellect level anymore, and knew the children were so terribly distracted by her that to have the girl graduate and be out of there would be a blessing. This would cut the total number of students down to 162 from 163 and would bring order back to the classroom. It was only fair to the students.

Overjoyed at the sight of an expected packet in the mail one Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Thornson marched straight over to Vanessa during recess (the girl sitting on the ground, looking about at the activity as the children commanded, as always). "What would you say about graduating?" she asked the girl who squinted up at her.

Her eyebrows went together in concern. "Do I have to?"

Ms. Thornson squatted down beside her, hiding disgust from the smell. "Yes, you do. Once you graduate, you can be an adult. You've already read all the textbooks, anyhow, so this is really a waste of your time. I want you to complete this special test after recess. Do your best, alright?"

Vanessa looked down at her dirty toes and said not a word. She began to cry, softly.

The children pointed and murmured about her as recess was called in and the students took their seats. "Ugly's crying!" they said to each other, shocked. They thought the girl had thick skin – she didn't cry no matter how mean they were to her. Even if she got hurt, she would only tear up a little. What could be causing this?

Bent over her desk, Vanessa's dirty, long blonde hair dangled onto the paper she was working on, bubbling in circles. Her tears fell upon the test, here and there. She did not look up from the test until she was through.

Finished, she sat there, hands tucked between her knees, waiting, uncomfortable.

Ms. Thornson handed the rest of the class their respective worksheets for the afternoon and stepped to Vanessa's desk, all eyes on them. She swiped the test out from beneath the canopy of hair and returned to the front to grade it.

The clock in the front ticked out the seconds aloud. Vanessa sniffled several times. The children and teens around her commented aloud, and a few asked (voices concerned!) what was the matter.

Ms. Thornson used to hush the students and scold them for such behavior – before Vanessa came. After she was gone, it would be that way again.

"Congratulations, Vanessa, you've graduated school!" Ms. Thornson announced from the front of the schoolhouse. "Come up and get your diploma."

Trudging slowly, she went, limply taking the stiff sheet of paper with her name written in just a moment ago. She didn't know that the teacher was supposed to shake her hand, and the teacher did not make a move to do so.

She did, however, lead the class in clapping for their fellow student.

"You don't belong in school anymore," Ms. Thornson whispered to the girl as the class clapped. "Now you can learn a trade and get a job."

In a flurry of sounds and light, Vanessa found herself outside the schoolhouse, the door shutting behind her. She thought she'd walked out, thought that was what she was supposed to do. Now, what was she supposed to do? 'Get a job'?


	6. On the Inside

Get a job - easier said than done, she thought sadly. Her job experience was shoveling poop, watering and grooming livestock. She knew how to peel vegetables and slaughter pigs and chickens, but she didn't know how to cook them. She was lucky to be where she was, getting the scraps and straw she got from the O'Donnells, that was what she'd been told – why did she have to go somewhere else? Didn't that count as a job?

Puzzled, she wandered about town, as she did not like to do alone. "I'm looking for a job," she murmured softly to people at their stores and stalls, but was turned down by the people that acknowledged her presence. Dejected, the strange girl sulked to the barn.

"And what are you doing, out of class?" Greta scolded from the clothes line as she saw the familiar and disturbing form slink by.

"I'm looking for a job," Vanessa replied, head down, words still a little hissing from the teeth. "I passed a test and I graduated," she explained, voice cracking.

Greta laughed. The pathetic girl entered school not long ago; graduation so early was impossible.

Vanessa didn't think it was funny, but stood stoic. She pulled the stiff page from inside her shirt and held it out to Greta. "What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked, since no one had yet told her. It wasn't money. She'd checked.

The laughing stopped.

"I'm supposed to get a job, now. I work here, but I don't get paid money, so it's not a job, but I can't find a job. It's really hard," she sighed, running her dirty, bare toes in the sand absentmindedly.

"You get paid in the food you eat, the roof over your head," Greta grumbled, feeling herself grow warm with anger, though she didn't think why. "And you eat entirely too much; you've become a nuisance. Really, you should leave; there's no reason to let you live off of us anymore," she went on, hands on her hips, tone stern. "You go on then, get. Find somebody to pay you as a farmhand, hmm? Not in Haven, not likely."

Vanessa's pulse quickened, knees weakened. Her face went numb and tingly, her ears not quite hearing properly. "W-where?" she stuttered, shocked.

"October's not far, hitch a ride." Greta snapped, returning to the wash, flustered, as Vanessa plopped onto her rear in the sand, silent.

As they were, Greta began to feel sorry for the girl, again, began to think this was too harsh. But no, it was not harsh, because this barn, this life had been a crutch to the girl, yet, look at her, she isn't a girl, she's a woman, she needs to stop pretending to be a child and grow up and move on! Yes, Greta reasoned, she was doing the right thing. It was one thing to give charity to a child, but she'd been wrong, the girl wasn't a child, she was an adult. How silly of her, she'd made a mistake, and this was best. She finished hanging the wash, but paused before returning to the house. "Vanessa, you need to leave now," she demanded in a somewhat soft voice.

Turning over her shoulder, Vanessa's glazed green-blue eyes gazed up. "I want to say goodbye to Jon and Sean and Marcus first."

That was why Greta was ushering her away; she didn't want her boys to have the chance to stop her. The poor boys just wouldn't understand; they were only children. "It's best if you go, now. It'll only hurt my boys more if you're here when they come home from school."

Vanessa hadn't thought of that, but it sounded right. She stood shakily and began to walk off. "Thank you."

---

Shining in the sunlight that poured from the windows, the organs glistened pink and red and purple. The heart was not beating, the flesh was still, and colder than when it was alive.

Vanessa felt wary eyes fall upon her. Before she could be scolded for dawdling again, she raised her blade and let it fall in a few choice places. She lifted the precise cuts onto paper for Lu to rush out to the customer and listened for the next order.

The hog carcass hung from the ceiling beside her high-stool, allowing her to cut and sit at a comfortable level. She didn't bother to wipe her blood-stained hands upon her long apron until the work day's end, and she rarely let her eyes leave the carcass. It had much to teach her.

She sharpened her long blade between carcasses, keeping it as sharp as she could at all times, making her work easier at this butcher shop in Carcasses, owned by brothers Lu and Yu.

A live hog would have made for better learning, but Yu always killed them out back before she could work on them. They screamed and squealed when they died, and she supposed she'd better have no part in that. It hurt her inside, to hear that.

"Lock up when you're through," Lu would always call out from the front of the shop, when it was time for he and his brother to call it a day. "See you tomorrow."

Vanessa cleaned off her hands and pulled a little book and pencil from the simple sling bag she wore across her chest under her clothing. She selected a few choice organs from the pile beneath the carcass hook and took them to the table in front of a window to dissect. In the paper-bound journal, she wrote notes and diagrams in such a small, delicate, precise print that it could barely be seen at all.


	7. Diagrams

She'd camped outside the Haven trading post for days until someone was willing to let the deformed, shit-smelling girl hitch a ride towards October. Finally, a truck carrying cattle grain let her hop in the back, but they were only going halfway, to Carcasses, and Vanessa was too hungry and weary to wait for a better ride.

Once in Carcasses, a town much larger than Haven but still so small compared to the great cities, Vanessa wandered about for days with no success. She drank from toma troughs and ate from garbage piles. As time went on, she became dirtier and smellier and the chances of getting a job seemed to dwindle to nothing. Begging was something she'd heard of before, but never tried. Perhaps it was time to try.

Every day, she went to each home with a barn at the edges of town, to every business in the center of town, asking if there was work, never daring to walk past the entryway. She called out her skills pertaining to each place, as best she could, never lying.

"Damn it, Jordan, that's a center loin, I said sirloin!" a man yelled as she walked toward the butchers again.

Curious, she stepped into the alley to peek through a window

A teenage boy stood off from a hog carcass, scowling, arguing. But the older man insisted that the cut was wrong, that any fool could see. "I bet she could do a better job!" he insisted, pointing in Vanessa's direction.

She wanted to hide, but knew she shouldn't. She nodded. "I know how to butcher a hog, and I need a job, please," she asked.

The teenager scoffed and returned to cutting the hog, but the older man turned to Vanessa and twirled his mustache. "What's he doing wrong?"

"The sirloin is further to the rear of the hog's side at the hip, and should be cut at right angles rather than diagonals," she replied easily.

"Jordan, you're fired," the man called without letting his eyes leave Vanessa's. "Miss, you're hired. Here's an advance on your first week," he added, holding out a few double dollars. "Go get cleaned up and presentable, you'll start tomorrow prompt at second rise. You run off with my money, I WILL be sore!"

Vanessa smiled with mouth closed despite the young man's cursing. She took the money and counted it, fifty! Where could she get cleaned up?

"Where can I get a bath?" she finally asked someone on the street, a woman carrying a baby.

"You certainly need one!" the woman exclaimed, "But no one's bound to give it for free!"

"I can pay!" Vanessa retorted.

"Cheapest inn in town's 3 blocks south, little gray building with a dog painted on the front. Don't let them charge you over 25$$ a week."

"Thank you!" the girl exclaimed, ignoring the stares and whispers around her as she walked through the streets with her hood down, ears covered by the scarf but hump still obvious.

Vanessa did as Yu'd asked, and was ready for work early and clean. It was a marvel how well she cleaned up, though the hump "is a shame," as Lu commented to his brother in a whisper she could hear.

After getting the blade sharp enough, she worked at twice the speed and at perfect accuracy compared to the other butcher's assistant, who was fired after Vanessa'd been on the job a mere 3 days. Lu and Yu hardly needed to touch a knife at all with her around, and she seemed happy with the low pay – it was a wonderful situation. Though, as Lu mourned in whispers she could still hear in the back, "We could do better if she hadn't the hump, we could have her in the front sometimes…too bad about that."

For 50$$ a week, she worked 6 days of 7 and was allowed to study after close. She kept a room at the inn and fed herself like other people did. Because she could, she bathed two, sometimes three times a week, and she bought used clothes that fit better, still men's clothing. The most expensive expense was the journal, which cost her a week's salary for only 200 pages, but paper being as rare as it was that was a reasonable cost and one she willingly paid.

---

The hog was not a human, but it still matched the medical texts somewhat. Her only entertainment in the white room, as a very young child, were the medical texts they left lying about the shelves in the room. She delighted in the color photographs and diagrams in the few that had color, and loved the long, complicated words and names that things had. There were a several non-medical books on the lower shelves; an old poetry book by Swift and a few novels, but she spent most of her empty days studying the medical books and singing along with the old (now, 'lost') music floating from down the hallway.

She sliced into the hogs' organs, pretending they were human, which they were close to being, especially the heart. The brain's areas were much like a person's, but obviously so different.

There were not nearly enough pages in her journal book to write down all she'd memorized from the texts; it would all have to remain only in her mind. What she did write down, however, were details about the functioning of the organs and systems she'd only read about before. These functions could break down, could be changed, fixed, broken.

Vanessa studied and dissected and fingered all she could before the light of the world dimmed against her, when she'd lock up as asked and shuffle 'home'. By lamp light, she corrected what she could, altering it to be applicable to a human and not a pig. When a diagram was perfect, each chemical and tissue and action plotted out in fine detail, she inked it and it remained preserved.

She spent days, weeks, months, and finally, a year at this work, toiling at the butchery for Yu and Lu. At such a point the hogs could teach her no more. She no longer stayed late to study at the butchery, but rather went back to the inn to pull things from memory alone, to try to build a working knowledge of the human brain and such with no physical evidence at all. It was stressful work, and resulted in many sleepless nights, trying and cursing at herself for not readily remembering everything. She came to work frustrated on many a morning, but said nary a word to her employers, nor did she let her work falter.

On occasion, she would simply stroll the streets idly, observing and thinking, sometimes taking a moment to buy a roll or skewer to munch on while drawing in the sand alongside a building. Children watched her draw but would not talk to her. She envisioned their optical nerves' workings as they watched, their inner ear balance allowing them to stand and shift as they watched.

There were only a few books in stores, and they were nonfiction only. No doctor lived in town; Haven's doctor visited on occasion, and she learned (from listening through a window outside the local clinic once in a while) that the only persons in town with medical knowledge at all were doing quite simple work. They had nothing to teach her.

She felt that Carcasses no longer had anything for her.

Vanessa listened in on the conversations of travelers, and finally bought a compass and map for herself. She had to sew a backpack and cloak from used clothing and cloth scraps from the tailor, and ended up fashioning a few primitive canteens from preserved hog bladders.

Yu was angry when she broke them the news one morning before work, but Lu understood. "You go become a famous butcher in the big city," he encouraged her, while his brother stewed, wondering where they'd find talent like hers again. "Here's your pay for the week so far – go ahead and take the day off, that should give you more time to get a ride."

She smiled slightly. However, she would not be finding a ride, since she'd decided not to try that route again. No, she'd be going straight to October on her own, on foot. "Thank you. Oh, and I drew up some instructions for your next assistants on the wall in the back, if that's ok. It should make it easier for them," she added helpfully.

Yu looked confused, as did his brother, but they waved good-bye to her as she strode off to gather her things from the inn and set off for good.

Entering their shop, the brothers went to look in the back room, where, upon two walls, a set of diagrams they didn't understand were painted out life-size in hog blood.


	8. Beautiful Women

For much of the journey, Vanessa was sure she would die. The heat, the exhaustion – traveling this way was worse than she'd remembered it. She doubted her ability to navigate by map, doubted her compass, doubted her supplies of water and food. There was nothing on any horizon about her, just the vast brown sand and the vast blue sky. When October's huge skyline finally emerged in the distance, her heart leapt up into her throat.

By the blue and green light of the five flawless moons, the city was frightening and loud. Crude music and crude words floated from taverns, children wrapped up their day's playing in the streets. Businesses were large and had large signs, some lit up in fluorescents. The air was filled with the confusing smell of baked bread mixed with diesel from trucks.

Vanessa stepped cautiously, feeling quite small in these wide streets, looking for a humble place to stay the night. She had trouble spotting someone to ask – most of these children were scary, the men drunk, the women busy. Eventually too worn to look, she stopped at a noodle stand to buy a small cup of broth, the cheapest thing they sold.

At the stand, they advised her to try a place in a part of town that was quieter, darker, and a half mile back the way she'd come. Vanessa trudged back that way, drawing stares and jokes from onlookers, ignoring them all.

The inn wanted more for a night than she had to spare, and would not lower their asking price. Dejected, Vanessa wandered back onto the street to look for a corner to sleep in. She settled on an alleyway between two brightly-lit buildings.

A woman laughed nearby and Vanessa watched the woman, a blur of bright colors and fabric rustling, pass by the alley. She marveled at the sight, of such a dress! Stepping to the edge, she peered round the corner to see a few more lovely women, each in a different bright color, skirts out a foot from their feet, hair up in curls with makeup on their faces. On balconies one floor above the street, a few women leaned over and smiled at men below.

Letting her hood fall back in a shadow, Vanessa wound a scarf about her hair and ears and stepped into the street with her backpack dangling from one hand. Smiling despite herself, her eyes glittered, filled with fluorescent colors and bright satin.

She walked closer to the building with the beautiful women, slowly, admiring the cuts of the dresses, the unusual hues and patterns, the intricate laces. Closer and closer, she wanted to peer in the building's windows, as one is allowed to do for free on business streets.

"We've got nothing for you here," a pretty woman murmured to her as she stared through the glass. The woman was short and curvy, with short curly black hair pulled up with green satin ribbons. Her green eyes matched her dress, emeralds to the rubies of her lips. Those eyes were studying not the girl's face, but her back, her hunched back.

"I'm sorry, I don't have money to buy anything," Vanessa replied, only half hearing what the lady'd said. "I'm looking for a job. Might you-"

"Look at that face, Maggie! If you were born upright we'd have a job for you," the woman in orange, beside her, whispered in reply, smiling somewhat apologetically. "Run along now, you're scaring away customers."

Vanessa looked over her shoulder, at the men staring on. "Oh, sorry," she muttered, stepping back to her alley, but stopping to call something to the women first. "So you couldn't use me…for anything? I'm helpful in the kitchen, for the laundry, cleaning, livestock, whatever you need!"

The women ignored her and began talking with a young man in a suit. She shuffled back to the alley, peering back over her shoulder all the way.

---

Vanessa hated this part.

Just like Haven, like Carcasses, no one wanted her for work. The butcher only hired family, and she could barely get a word in to the busy store owners in this bustling city. She found that there were farming communities around the east edge of October – she could possibly fall back on her earliest 'career' and try for a stable hand position again. That was an option she preferred to avoid.

After days of searching, she walked back to 'her' alley with a little loaf of bread bought with some of the last of her money. Tomorrow, she decided, she'd need to go to the rural part of town, or she'd end up starving.

At least she didn't smell too badly. The alley wasn't terribly dirty and she'd managed to keep away from garbage and toma and keep her face and hair groomed. That, she'd learned, was important.

She went out of her way to walk along in front of the place where the beautiful ladies were, to stare at them and their fineries without stopping, before the men would come and she'd likely hurt their business by being there.

On this evening, a harsh breeze was blowing in, and the buildings' windows were drawn shut, shutters and all. She could see no finery, no beautiful things; how disappointing.

"Where are you sleeping, darling?" asked a thick, deep, voice.

Vanessa turned back to the door, where a gorgeous older women in all black leaned against the frame, addressing her. She wondered what to say, why it mattered? "An alley," she responded, pulling down her hood.

"Thought so," the woman nodded, crossing her arms after beckoning Vanessa closer. "You come by here every day. I've seen you. Maggie's told me you're looking for work, and by the look of it you're not getting it."

Meeting her eyes, she smirked. "I'll take whatever, I'm a fast learner," she offered feebly.

"They won't hire you because you're a hunchback, sweetie," the lady stated matter-of-factly, taking a lazy draw on her long cigarette. "You're not contagious, but you might as well be, hmm?" Her eyes scanned the girl, looking past the rags to note the ridiculously lovely eyes, the blonde hair, the smooth skin, the symmetry and cut of the facial structure. "Beauty's only skin deep and you've got a problem too big to hide."

Vanessa wondered if there was a point to this – she stuck around and listened to these words, true and painful, hoping there would be something useful within her speech.

There was.

"We need someone 'round here, we won't pay much at all, else we're going without one," the lady announced, a few stray brown and gray curls falling into her face from the wind. "Tonight's a bad night, a good night to come inside, and that's what I can offer you. A room, and meals. You'll be doing the cleaning, helping with the cooking, odd jobs; I need you to do whatever I tell you, and you might get a double dollar or few here and there, when I can give it. Do we have a deal here?"

Vanessa glanced up at the large square building, the balconies, imagined the pretty dresses and pretty ladies inside. She smiled and nodded.

"My name is Madame Valentina and I am in charge here. The women here work for me, and you must work for everyone. Come inside, and tell me your name, where you are from."

Obeying happily, Vanessa stepped inside, carting her only possessions by hand, eyes marveling at the grandeur and decorations within this, the front room, filled with couches and paintings and lamps with dangling crystals and beads on them. "Um, I'm Vanessa. I'm from several places."

"Hmm," Madame Valentina responded, stepping gracefully across the room to lead the girl to a room further back. "Names starting with a 'V' are the best, aren't they. Tonight I will have you begin help in the kitchen, you do what you are instructed by whoever is there. First to where you will stay, your things are safe here."

Vanessa followed the woman of poise past gorgeous paintings and red and purple velvety things, tassels of gold and plush, plush seating. She opened a door and they stepped inside, and the scenery took a 180 degree turn. Inside this room it was gray and plain and cold, without the golden light. There was a little, lumpy mattress on the plain wood floor, a mirror with blackened edges propped upon a simple old dresser, along with a modest oil lamp. Shelves full of linens lined the tops of the walls, just above head-height.

"We've got but one bathroom for us all, just through that door, there. You will use that, but only when the other ladies are not needing it. There are four tubs, so that shouldn't be a problem, I would think. Leave your things there, I'm sure they've much to have peeled and readied for dinner." She led Vanessa, now without her cloak and bag, down a stairway to the large kitchen area and turned to leave her there after introducing her to the four painted ladies working within.

"Madame, I'm sorry, I have a question!" Vanessa called out. "I didn't ask, what do you sell here?"

The ladies laughed. Madame stood stoic. "My dear, we do not sell things. We entertain."


	9. She's Not Normal

There were twenty-two women working in this building, which they called 'home', not counting the Madame and Vanessa. At meals they all sat around a few long, narrow tables in the basement near the kitchen. They laughed and joked and smiled and were beautiful, Vanessa was certain, decked in their finest because it was nearly night, and that meant it was nearly time for work for them.

Silent, Vanessa took it all in, listened to the things they said, not understanding most of it. The women were telling stories of men, most named 'John,' whom Vanessa assumed were customers, and they were using slang she didn't understand to describe something on their bodies, but she really couldn't tell. She ate her dinner, it being more filling and pleasant-tasting than she was used to, and glanced around the room the entire time. Many of the women stared her down when they thought she didn't notice, giving nervous smirks to her when they saw that she saw them doing so. Madame Valentina made an announcement at the end of the meal, to let them all know that Vanessa had begun there, as a full-time servant, that she was to help them and they were to let Madame know if there were any problems with her work there. Vanessa was instructed to stand to show herself, and the hunched back became apparent.

"She is not a normal girl, so you should all get used to this quickly; she is a girl nonetheless. Her back has some lump on it, you see, but she will be a hard worker anyway, won't you Vanessa?"

Vanessa nodded, face red. "My ears look strange, too," she confessed, eager to let everyone know if they were going to accept it. She pulled her scarf away, and the women whispered amongst each other.

"See then, she's not normal. Now then," Madame announced, clapping her hands together loudly. "To work, ladies!" As the rustling and bustling women left for the stairs, the commanding lady turned to her. "Vanessa, dear, you'll begin with the wash first thing after this storm blows past. In the meantime, let's dress you in something that better fits your sex, eh?"

---

Vanessa stared wide-eyed into the mirror. She looked…positively odd. The simple, deep blue sundress Madame provided her was tight on her body to the waist, with a flowing skirt instead of pants, and it tied in the front instead of buttoning up. There was no satin, no lace, no velvet, no metal embroidery, but it was still fairly pretty for a dress.

It smelled musty, since it was stored in a musty place. A messy pile of discarded clothing filled the rest of the chest in the basement, which Madame explained were ripped, stained, used beyond repair, and that Vanessa was allowed to use these items to build something onto the blue dress to hide her hump and her ears. Madame held scissors she'd cut open the back of the dress with, and the hump was cold in the air, naked. "A big hood would do. For the hump I mean. See what you can do, that will be your work for the night, sleep when you want. Don't let the customers see you; you're not what they came to see. Just wait around until you're needed."

There was a sewing kit and the scissors left there with her, and she sat in a chair, laying out the ruined items on the dinner tables, alone. Footsteps sounded on the ceiling, and she smiled and giggled, running her hands over the dresses they called ruined, but she still called beautiful. She stepped out of her 'new' dress and pulled her old clothing back on. A dress form in the corner had to be adjusted in to a much thinner size to meet her fit, and she spent time sewing up the dress to fit her frame better, studying the fabrics at her disposal to make a few modifications and add a little décor. She fashioned a purple-blue velvet hood, very large, and added it to the hole in the back, loose over where her hump would be. Strips of this velvet were sewn together to make a bodice, and she took silver thread detailing from the sleeve edges of a ruined dress to trim the hood and bodice, making for a finished project that she tried on and admired in the full-length mirror on the stone wall. Tying on a ribbon-trimmed velvet head-band, she felt like a different person, but didn't want to dirty the dress before washing up. She dressed in her rags and marched up the stairs to her room.

Blushing, she peeked round the corner of the upstairs door, and hid round corners all the way down the hall to her room, quiet as a mouse – a tall, odd mouse. She was careful to follow Madame's wishes, lest she ruin this good thing.

Once inside her little cell, she ran her fingers against the soft, smooth velvet on the dress in her lap and cracked the door just so, watching the beautiful ladies walk by, usually with a smiling man beside them.

---

Vanessa woke early, but was eager to start the day. She rushed to the bathroom to bathe before the other women arose, and then dressed in her new girl's clothing. The women had slept late, having gone to sleep after Vanessa had, for certain. The house was quiet, save the yawning sounds of waking women headed to the washroom. Stepping lightly, smiling, Vanessa wandered through the main rooms, open as they were, stopping to admire herself in a mirror. If it weren't for her posture, you'd almost think she WAS normal! Leaning back into her hump, Vanessa imagined what she'd look like then…

"Vanessa, gather the linens - they're laid out in the halls where they're needed - and take them out back, then head down to the kitchen to help; you're to start the wash immediately after breakfast,; you'll find what you need there," Madame commanded, stepping down the spiral staircase in the center of the house wearing another gorgeous, jet black gown. She studied the girl, who stood awkwardly in the center of the grandiose room, and stepped past her, statuesque. "Good work on the dress, darling. You look positively human."


	10. Control

Vanessa's many talents far exceeded what had been expected of her, and as a result, she was kept busy enough to go weeks without leaving the house. She proved herself a remarkable seamstress, as her own garment proved, was quick and thorough with the wash and the meals, and was a very quick learner for whatever else they asked her to do. She hummed and sang old tunes from memory while doing laundry, and the women taught her new ditties that they sang along with her. Since the ladies had their linens washed quite frequently – usually after entertaining at most three clients in her room – Vanessa could keep her things quite ridiculously clean as well. Sewing, cooking, cleaning, scrubbing, carrying; through the day, she worked on tasks, happy to do so, for the girls came to respect her.

It helped that her appearance became more 'normal'. She'd filed her teeth down well, and though she had trouble chewing, no one noticed. Her ears were covered at all times and she kept herself clean and presentable. Watching the women about her, she mimicked their graceful, swaying walk. And with the help of a back brace she'd fashioned for herself out of old corset boning, she walked upright during the day. Certainly, the brace hurt, but with the hood covering her hump one would think her a normal girl, if a very tall one.

Actually, she appeared to be not normal, but rather beautiful. By the time she'd earned the Madame's trust and was allowed out to fetch items with the house's money, she'd learned the poise and posture enough to walk on the streets, head up, without obvious deformity. But she still drew stares.

She could hear their comments, with her covered but still keen ears, and they were saying good things, if sometimes catty and jealous things. They weren't saying she was ugly, they were marveling at her beauty. Vanessa didn't know what to make of it, but it filled her heart with excitement.

Upon returning to the house, hands full of groceries and toiletries, she was beaming and blushing. Madame saw her on her way in and questioned her.

"The people were saying I'm pretty," Vanessa explained, tracing the wood grain with a bare toe. "People usually say I'm ugly."

Madame nodded. "You're hiding the ugly parts and showing the pretty parts – it's an illusion, dear. Everything here," she noted, sweeping her arms to gesture at the house, at the other girls, "is an illusion. Beauty is an illusion. And beauty is dangerous unless you have control."

Vanessa was confused, and set down the bags for a moment. "Control over the way you look?"

"Control over the situation, over others," Madame corrected, bringing a long-stemmed cigarette to her lips. "Beauty can be a woman's only weapon against men. If you aren't careful, your looks are giving men control over you. In this house, we are beautiful because it gives us a way to live, and we have control because this is our house and we control what goes on in our house, though we give the men who come in the illusion that they have control. Do you understand?"

"Sort of. But why would looking nice give someone control over other people? And what kind of control? Why is it bad if someone else has control?"

"Domination! Pain, silly! If a woman controls her environment, she is safe because she can keep men from dominating her. A woman who is not in control, her life is worth nothing to anyone. She is cattle. Others can treat her like cattle. You are young, you haven't experienced this yet. May you never, but you probably will."

"I lived in a barn once. I ate pig slop," Vanessa interjected haughtily.

"You misunderstand my definition of cattle, darling." Madame Valentina chuckled to herself softly, sadly. "Simply put, never trust a man; you can only seldom trust a woman. Now go on, continue with your chores; I may tell you more, one day, when you have learned more about the sexes."

Vanessa did as told, but along the way wondered what to make of all that. She wanted to dismiss it, but nevertheless, her subsequent trips out were not as enjoyable. Glancing at the faces around her, she couldn't help but wonder if those people, when they looked at her, were thinking about stealing money from her, or making her do THEIR chores, or something like that. Because, as Madame said, pretty girls were susceptible to that sort of thing, or so she understood.

---

Trust and respect earned aside, Vanessa still avoided the customers. It was easy to do, since the men were usually drunk from the nearby saloons, and thoroughly distracted.

She was never to make eye contact or say a word with them, never to venture into the front room during evenings, always to duck aside if a client were nearby. This made sense to her, because she was not as beautiful as the women with fancy hair-dos and intricate, full dresses. Her lips were not painted bright red, nor her eyes lined with black and colored powders. As Madame put it, she didn't know the 'art of entertaining a man,' and that she had a place in the house because she did not. But Vanessa felt a jealousy, that her 'place' in the house was so unglamorous.

She interacted with the women of the house all the time; they were like friends, telling her stories about what customers had given them for being 'their favorite,' bragging about what rich or famous person they'd had as a client. They seemed to truly be grateful for Madame having 'found' them, that the house was a place where they could live safer and richer than anywhere else. However, they did at times seem worn out, bedraggled, and sometimes were quiet and withdrawn as though remembering something sadly. When in such a depression, the ladies tended to cut off from Vanessa. Janice and Lola had, on separate occasions, become very angry with her for no reason she could fathom, yelling and crying at her about nothing she understood.

More often than this, the women treated Vanessa with an affection, calling her a 'girl,' where they called themselves 'women' or 'ladies.' Certainly, Vanessa was taller than them all, by a few inches or a foot, depending upon the lady, but still she was little to the rest. They referred to her as 'little one,' 'kid,' 'girl' with affection. She did not know what 'angel' or 'virgin' meant, but they said those towards her as well.

A man whom the ladies referred to as 'Father' visited one day and gifted 'his favorite,' Trin, with a thick book. "This book ain't for women like us," she explained, smiling, as she handed the thick, leather-bound volume to Vanessa. Recognizing it as something of great worth, Vanessa happily accepted it.

The book was titled "Bible" and had no obvious author, save some titled names. It was long, a very long story, with no clear plot, but she recognized some things from what she'd heard at school, and from Greta. Clearly, this took place on the planet from before, the planet Earth, not Gunsmoke – the animals and greenery and water just didn't exist as it was written! The volume was useful in learning some terms she'd not been able to understand previously. For instance, she learned that angels were alien beings of beauty but without gender, mostly good things. And she found that 'virgin' was the word for women who had not had sexual intercourse before, and had no children. 'Lie with' and 'know' and such were used as euphemisms for the act of intercourse, though the act wasn't always used to make children in the story. Strange, because that was Vanessa's understanding – men and women have sex, they have a child, and that's what a family is. And everybody knew that nobody could die and have their body brought back to life days later. Obviously.

How odd; what an odd story.

Having little to offer Vanessa in the way of learning, really, she finished the book over a weekend and thought it largely a waste of pages. Flipping through her own journal, she frowned to see that the pages were full from her time in Carcasses, that she hadn't added a thing to it, but could, if she weren't out of pages. Oh, and this Bible book, it had so many pages, over 1,200 pages, all thin but strong. And it was an impressive ten by twelve inches, compared to her pathetic journal's four by five. With such a thick volume, she could get all over the medical knowledge in her mind down on paper!

She left the volume out on her little dresser, frowning at it in thought, until she was called out for chores once more.


	11. The Price

When Madame called for Vanessa to follow her to her office while in the middle of making breakfast, she did not protest. But at the top of the stairs, Madame closed the basement door and began to speak, leading them both upstairs, not at all towards the office.

"Have you figured out what goes on behind closed doors, yet, Vanessa?" she asked, stern, as they walked.

"Not entirely," she replied honestly. What she knew was that she heard muffled sounds, grunts, moans, and the occasional cry from a lady sometimes in evenings when she was asked out for chores. Her heart fluttered and stomach dropped to hear it, but they were not being hurt. She'd run, frightened, to Madame's office room when she'd first walked past a room filled with such sounds, but Madame assured her that the entertainment they provided required privacy, that the girls were safe, they were in control, and the sounds were a part of the entertainment they were giving. Madame insisted that their business required discretion. The business was none of Vanessa's business. Surely Madame was right, and the ladies all seemed safe and fine afterwards, so Vanessa passed those rooms and did nothing.

"What a strange one you are!" Madame sighed. "Really, did no one tell you anything? How old are you, eighteen yet? Already a woman and you know nothing of the act of love! Vanessa, this is a brothel. We have sex with men for money, and we live a good life doing it," she stated very simply, almost proudly.

That made sense, she supposed, though it seemed a strange service to offer. So that big book was right; sex didn't always lead to children. Sex was also entertainment. And she let it slide that Madame had her age wrong; really, she was closer to three than eighteen, but that was a matter no one needed to know.

Madame opened the door to Jessa's room and ushered her inside. Jessa was tucked into bed, late in the morning, hidden away under blankets.

"Our beauty gives us control, here," Madame continued, standing at the foot of Jessa's bed. "A client was unreasonably rough with Jessa last night. Because Jessa is a woman, he felt he could treat her like an animal."

"That bastard," Jessa sneered, one eye swollen shut.

"An associate of ours will be paying him a visit today, and he will pay for what he has done. Because we are in control, we do business on our terms. It is important that you understand that in society, this man would likely go unpunished. And his punishment today will not prevent another from doing this to one of my ladies in the future."

"It happens to all of us," Jessa chimed in. "The house is safer than the street, safer than being on our own. Even if we weren't in this trade; us women are targets for abusing."

"Especially the pretty ones. Do you understand now?" Madame asked, silhouetted by soft sunlight through an open window. She seemed so invulnerable, so like a pillar, so regal.

Vanessa nodded. Her heart fell a little, as the idealized view she had of the women's lives in the house became tarnished. She was embarrassed to have been so jealous.

"I've been offered a great sum for your virginity, darling," Madame announced. "You've gotten attention from a wealthy men, he's seen you out. He's heard about your 'problems' and seems rather rabid to get at you. Doing this would repay me my kindness so far, would keep you here for a few years more; an amount sufficient for a surgeon to correct your problems. Then, of course, you'd be a beauty for certain, perhaps you could be a top earner here.

"His offer is, well, ridiculously generous, for certain, and anyone would be a fool to pass it up. However, I would like to hear your choice in the matter, with your eyes open, as they should be now."

"I can pay someone to fix me?" Vanessa asked, for clarification, as she steadied herself against a nearby bureau. "You think I should do it?"

Madame shifted her weight a little and sighed. "Darling, I would not venture to decide this for you. This decision will change your life. Giving up one night to this fellow could allow you normality, the rest of your life. Know that not everyone can live this way, you know, our work is hard on the body and the mind. Most women try to save their first time for their 'soul mate,' if you believe in that sort of thing. There is love and there is survival, and this is the latter. It would be impolite not to respond to his offer within the week, if you would please decide by then," she noted, striding for the door.

Standing there, breathing quick but soft, staring out at the window, semi-blinded by the light, Vanessa's mind processed what she had learned. She half-heard Jenna's order for breakfast to be brought up, sort of stumbling away to do as asked.


	12. First Time

Word spread through the house. Within the hour, all ladies knew about the offer, knew the amount, were speculating about the fellow's identity, about what the outcome would be. Women traded stories about the sum of their 'first sale', if they had one, and would otherwise be jealous, but were not since the 'generous offer' came because of Vanessa's deformity, not her beauty. They sometimes envied her face, but never her hump.

By that right, they were intrigued, that this could fund a surgery to fix what was wrong with her, to turn her into a true beauty. Penelope noted that she'd had extra toes on each foot, and paid for their removal by working. She paid a few hundred double dollars, and performed a few favors for the doctor, and it was 'worth every bit', as she said.

---

Vanessa sped through her chores, grimacing slightly due to a pounding headache. Her back hurt, her chest hurt. The moment she had free, she rushed downstairs to be alone with that full-length mirror.

Could she truly be rid of this thing, these things? So close to her spine, the hump was, that she thought it impossible to remove, but really why not? Why couldn't the thing be excised? If she could reach it, if it weren't for the blood loss issue, she could do it herself. Just slice it off and sew it up and be done with it. The ears – she wasn't sure. There had been mention of 'plastic surgery' in texts, but not at length enough for her to know for certain how a person could fix her ears, her teeth, her back. However, if such technology did in fact exist, she was a fool to pass it up, wasn't she?

Her 'first time,' love, these were things she hadn't considered before. She didn't think a girl like her, born like her, would ever be able to make a family like those around her. It was assumed. If she could use her body to her advantage, wouldn't that be alright?

The women in the house lived in absence of 'love,' that much she was sure of. They seemed to pretend it, but it wasn't actually there. Love was what started marriages and made children. But it couldn't be all that special, considering how people spoke of theirs. Why, Greta complained about her husband constantly! And she'd been told that many husbands beat their wives!

At the brothel, women were beat sometimes, but at least they were not owned by a husband, and could wear beautiful things and be beautiful and live happily and free.

Of the act itself, the act referenced in many books but never described in full, never with illustrations or explanation of what people actually did, Vanessa wondered what it meant for her. It involved touching, she assumed, kissing maybe, and sleeping. Touching other people wasn't something she did often. It was something she didn't feel she needed, but it was not bad either. If someone touched her, she usually took it as a compliment – that they would venture to touch such a thing as she. If this man wanted to pay a lot to touch her – touch her in a way very important – that was a big compliment. The women seemed to think so, too.

She wondered if the act involved clothing removal – since she remembered the advice, that she should not let boys see her nude. Was the 'messing with' that Greta referred to actually sex? Maybe Greta was trying to help Vanessa learn to avoid having sex, to avoid having children before she had a house? So then, if under Madame's care sex did not mean children, and it entailed a house, Greta's warning perhaps did not apply?

Vanessa wished for an explanation of the act, at least, before her decision could be final.

---

She didn't wish to bother Madame with this, because the other women knew, obviously. Near noon, the ladies gathered in the bath for turns in the tubs, so Vanessa ventured to sit there to ask them. The air was hot and humid from the water, and the voices within bounced from tiles covering the walls and floor. Seating herself upon the laundry hamper by the sinks, Vanessa turned to the four ladies bathing in a row. "How do you have sex?" she asked seriously.

The ladies laughed. "See, I told you she doesn't know," Maggie commented to Traci.

"Sweetie," Traci began, smiling, "do you know about man parts and woman parts?"

Vanessa nodded, though she only knew about men's from a picture.

"Well the man's…oh, what word to use. The man has a thing that gets big when he gets excited about a woman, you know? And he puts that in the woman's part, between her legs. Do you understand?"

Yes, she knew about the woman parts. She had a cycle, and the other women had a cycle, and they talked about it a lot. It was discussed in the books and she knew to prepare for the cycle, though it didn't make it any more pleasant to know. The cycle was related to children, and since it was all associated with the same set of organs and orifice, the explanation (vague though it was) made perfect sense. Sperm came from the phallus, so that was the key. Boy, it sure didn't look like it could do that, from the diagram!

"So the guy puts his thing in you, in and out for a while;"

"Sometimes not so long a time," Maggie interjected, laughing.

"Yeah, so he does that and then his…well, his stuff comes out into you and he's done. He pays you and he leaves. And Madame has this paste that we put up into us before we do it so we don't get pregnant. Ok?" Geena smiled.

Vanessa rested her chin in her hands. "So then, why do the men do it? There aren't babies, so…so it's 'entertainment.' Why?"

Again, they laughed. "It's fun, sometimes."

"It feels good to the man, sometimes it feels good for us, too. It makes them feel really good. They pay for it, after all."

"Oh," Vanessa responded, mulling this over. "Why is the first one worth more?"

"It's a big deal, to the Johns at least," Traci answered, rolling her eyes. "It's just the first time you do it, that's all; it hurts some, but it's really just something they like, to have someone the first time."

"Some guys, they want to be with a lady who knows what to do, knows what they like," Maggie reflected, "and some guys, they want to be with somebody that don't know what goes where."

"It doesn't really make sense, hon." Janice jumped in, taking the back-brush from Traci. "We don't bother wondering why men are the way they are, we just aim to profit from it."

"It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it!" Maggie announced, to laughter.

Vanessa simply sat upon the hamper, staring at the tiles and grout. If she were one of them, maybe she would have thought that was funny, too. It would be nice, to be one of them, these beautiful women.

"If you've no more to ask, you really ought to start with the linens, dear," Geena noted, standing from the sudsy water to dry off her curvaceous body.

---

The decision felt already-made before she'd decided, but the conclusion she came to was the same. "Madame, I accept this man's offer."

Madame breathed deeply and did not smile, nor frown. She simply wore her usual, tightly drawn, sober expression, and nodded slightly. "I will send word, then. When I get the details I will prepare you myself. It will be soon."

Vanessa smirked slightly. Soon, soon she'd be able to 'join the ranks,' not just of the painted ladies, but of society in general. Soon she'd be rid of her deformities. She would soon be a woman and, soon after, a normal one.


	13. Remember?

Waking, very, very slowly, Vanessa's mind was blank, empty, calm. Feeling and senses gradually returned to her. She could not wake with a start, not like usual. The soft, yielding feel of the mattress below her, the growing discomfort of the hot air collected within her sheets, it was distant, and she took time to digest it all.

There were fuzzy memories, images. A dream – Madame saying strange things to her, an anxiety, waiting. It was a sort of dream she had had several times, lately.

She kept her eyes closed tight as she lay, curled on her side. Her skin felt clammy, hot, sweaty. Tight binding kept her from breathing in all the way. Scalp itching, throat terribly dry, slowly the realization came to her.

Chores!

Oh, but it's late already! With a start, she scrambled onto her knees and climbed off her low bed.

Thud! She fell. Her foot didn't meet the floor, it fell below, and she landed hard on her knees and hand. The surface was firm, thick, cool. Carpet. When did she have this carpet?

But this was not her room! Glancing about wildly, having fallen back upon her rear on an elaborate, exotic rug, Vanessa wondered when she'd wandered into the master suite?

Standing, wincing, she straightened her skirt. Why, she was still wearing her dress, and she felt quite dirty in it. When did this happen? How did she manage to nap in a room she only entered to clean, and how could she sleep so, when it was so hot?

It was all quite confusing. But if she didn't go back to…well, whatever it was she was supposed to be doing instead of napping. Stepping to the door, she felt the odd sensation about her private parts. Her under-things were absent – how sloppy of her, to forget to put them on that morning! Her knees were sore, her arm was sore. Also sore was her back and several other places, explained easily by her having slept in her brace, in her dress, for goodness sake!

Gazing down the 3 halls outside the master room's doorway, Vanessa took note that the linens were not out. It felt about near first noon, so if they were not here, she must've done them already. Good thing!

Then what was she do to next – had breakfast been made already?

She raced downstairs and blushed when inquisitive looks met her on the way. They seemed to all know she had messed up. Hopefully Madame would not be cross with her. Ducking her head out an open window at the back, she saw a few of the ladies scrubbing and hanging linens. Oh, dear, that was HER job!

Perhaps it wasn't too late to work on breakfast – but she could smell it cooking, wafting up from the basement, already!

Standing at the window, Vanessa let the breeze cool the sweat upon her hair, her face. She hadn't messed up like this before, so she wasn't quite sure what to do and wondered what, if any, punishment she might face.

Her sensitive ears (which she hadn't yet realized were completely uncovered at the time) piqued when they detected Madame Valentina's voice. "Fetch the linens from the Master bedroom," she was telling someone, from another room.

Vanessa's chest tightened and she clenched her teeth tightly together as she turned to face the woman. Stepping cautiously, warily into the main room, she saw Madame gazing at a portrait upon the wall, statuesque in a black, satin gown trimmed in long, black feathers. What should she say?

"Madame," she began, "I am sorry, the linens and breakfast, I fell asleep, I-"

"No apologies today, darling," Madame interrupted simply, holding her cigarette to her lips as the other arm crossed about her bust. "To stay in bed is understandable. The Baron has made another appointment for you, three days hence, though you may decline if you wish."

Baron? Was that the man who wanted her first time? So then, he also wanted the second? "I would like to wait until after I've met him, you know, but do you think I'll need more money for the surgery, more than he's paying for this first time?"

"Met? Darling, what more do you need to do with a man to have 'met' him?"

Vanessa paused, then shot Madame a puzzled look.

"You…don't remember?"

"The dreams?" Vanessa asked, wondering what memories she could have about a person she may have met anonymously, already, she supposed. "I only kind of remember those. But I always wake up before I get to the part where the man's supposed to get there."

Madame turned in full to stare at her, lifting her free hand to Vanessa's chin, staring full into her eyes. She was studying her expression, and she was a woman very good at reading a person. "Before you woke up just now, what is the last thing you remember?"

Thinking hard on this, because the answer seemed to be very important to Madame, Vanessa scanned her memories as best she could. It was odd, that she couldn't immediately answer her, because Vanessa's memories were usually so clear and obvious to her. In truth, she didn't remember entering the Master room that morning, or last night, nor did she remember crawling upon the tall, tall bed, or tucking herself into its gorgeous, silken sheets. And she really thought that'd be a thing to remember!

It took time, but finally she had a response. "I was talking to you; you were telling me about something. I don't remember what about, I apologize. It, it was late, though. We'd all just had supper."

Madame was amazed – she was not lying! The girl had no knowledge of the Baron, of the night! The conversation she thought the girl was referring to could have been when she'd taken her aside to tell her about the initial 'appointment,' that the man would come to the house that night. She'd given her the special cream and instructed her on its use, and she'd walked her through the 'process' of meeting with 'clientele.' Vanessa had listened seriously, intently, though she was a bit pale and most obviously nervous. As instructed, the girl had waited in the main room that evening, and had lead the man up into the assigned room (in this instance, the Master room, for it was the finest and therefore the most suited for such an expensive night).

Madame had, in honesty, been nervous for the girl, herself. She was always a little uneasy when it came to 'first nights' and when the Baron had come back to the main room, by himself, she worried that something may have happened to her. Hiding her unease, Madame took a second appointment from the Baron, who though stoic was clearly beaming internally with satisfaction. Upon seeing him off herself, Madame stepped upstairs.

The door to the master bedroom was ajar. Ducking inside, she saw the girl \ sitting nude upon the foot of the bed with her legs tucked beneath her. Vanessa's hair was mussed; on the floor her dress was quite messy but not torn. She looked to be calm, breathing slowly, and she was staring off, away. Her face was perfectly calm. There was no panic there, no swollen or bruised skin visible, no clutching at wounds. Certainly, there was the distinct glisten of dead tear tracks down her cheek, but that was to be expected.

Thinking it unnecessary to step inside, Madame softly closed the door and left her within. After a night's work, all ladies were allowed to be alone in the afterward, and allowed to sleep late. This was only fair.

So then, one could imagine the Madame's bewilderment that the girl had, seemingly, completely lost her memory of the entire matter.

"Madame?" Vanessa asked meekly. She wished to remove her brace, for her back hurt her terribly at that point. And she knew she was dirty and messy and perhaps smelly, and that meant she should avoid being near to people she might offend (Madame included), and that she would need a bath quite soon and to clean her clothing just as soon. But most urgently, her concern was growing, that in such a long, serious silence, she was bound to be punished in some acute manner.

Wincing slightly at the sound of her title, Madame dropped her hand from Vanessa's face and went back to take a long draw from her cigarette. Turning slightly to blow it away from the girl's face, she thought it best to let her know the truth. "Darling, you met Baron Kinsley last night. He came and he was with you, he paid in full and he was pleased enough to request another time. I haven't the slightest why you can't recall this, but it's certainly fact – you, my dear, are a woman now."

With that, Vanessa found that she could no longer feel her toes. She throbbed in places, a cold throbbing, painful, and her heart pounded slowly but deeply. In a book, from her early days, she read of Lacunar Amnesia, the inability to remember a specific event. Her long-term memory of her night with the Baron – assuming what Madame said was true – seemed to be blocked. The condition was psychological, not having to do with injury. Not physical injury. For some reason, her mind was shielding the event from her consciousness.

So then, she was no longer a virgin. That explained the strange soreness around her crotch, she supposed. Head spinning, she followed Madame into the cellar for breakfast, not listening to words surrounding her, not seeing faces, not smelling the food, and certainly not eating a bite. She'd assumed this would be a time for happiness, pride, relief, perhaps some regret or anger or disgust. Never did she think that she'd be left devoid, empty, unknowing.

Vanessa simply stared into her plate until the world came back into focus, until her ears let her in on the syllables and syntax. She became casually aware that her ears were showing, that the women around her were talking somewhat uncomfortably, and were sometimes whispering things about the Baron, about her.

If facts were true, then things she didn't remember were what had happened, and that was simply the way things were. The sweet smell of breakfast made her dry throat water, made her reach for her fork and her glass. It satisfied an intense hunger she had, as though she'd been traveling, though it certainly didn't taste as good as it was.

She felt so tired, her mind, her eyes, her body.

Upon the end of the meal, as the other ladies were filing out, Madame swept past her and told her things: that she'd earned the rest of the day 'off',' something about a commission percentage, and mention of a surgeon she knew who could take care of her 'problems.'

Finding herself alone, Vanessa stepped slowly, softly up the cold, stone steps into the bathroom. There was a free tub and someone told her that it was hers that day, because she was one of them and those were the rules. Distant, still, stoic, she undressed and slipped into the lukewarm water, feeling it sting her in a delicate place.


	14. Aftermath

"Playing hard to get is surely an admirable angle to play him at," Madame began, hands upon her hips as she addressed Vanessa at the laundry, in a tone that betrayed some aggravation. "However, his appointment was made for tonight. I'm going to cancel with him, and you'll be losing another fine sum of money, I'll have you know. Hopefully he'll take to another woman here, so that someone may profit from this opportunity lost."

Vanessa continued pinning out the wash, staring at the white sheets, these simple clear sheets. If she let her eyes stare and lose focus some, her vision blurred enough that she couldn't see the faint stains upon them at all. She could trick her eyes into seeing pure white, clean sheets.

"Doctor Moriko has named a price you could pay; you only need the steamer fare – funny, that the good Baron's offering enough to more than cover that."

Pure, pure white. Cooling, clean water upon solid light sheets, billowing softly in the western wind.

"You disappoint me, darling. I took you in, taught you life and kept you safe from it all the same," Madame scolded, impatient. "You stand to profit better than most of us dream to in single nights, stand to earn your health and claim your place as a woman in control of her own destiny. Instead? Three days of silence. I have met girls who let the end of their virginity be the end of their life. They were the weak ones. I thought you were strong."

Black boots with high heels stepped away, you could see them from beneath the hems of the billowing sheets. Then there was sand, and the wind whistled, and there were only the sheets and the sand.

Vanessa wasn't standing straight anymore. 'That morning,' she'd tossed her back brace into the basement chest. She'd removed the fancy silver decorations from her freshly-washed dress. And when Jessa was about to throw out a sheet due to a stubborn stain, Vanessa took it and dyed it with dug clay, to treat and use as a cloak for herself, instead.

She didn't want to wear that dress anymore, but the other scrap dresses were even flashier than what she'd made, and she hadn't the money for a simpler one, new or used. Madame was still holding the profit from her 'sale,' as she thought of it. Vanessa hadn't spoken hardly a word since that night, and hadn't asked for a dime from Madame. There were chores to be done, errands to run, fancy dresses to make, and she executed it all as well as before, though more silent and stoically.

O

O

Many of the ladies had tried to speak with her, had asked many questions and seemed interested in her turn of events. But since she did not respond, save for a few "I don't know"s, interactions with them always wound up into lectures and stories. Each woman had her opinion. Some thought she would benefit from hearing about how some of the ladies had horrible first times, but had turned out perfectly fine. Others spoke of the overall great unimportance of sex itself, how it meant nothing, really, that to experience it and take command of oneself was a great liberation.

So, Vanessa let time tick by around her, let words be said to her, and she wore her ugly, tan cloak over her lovely, tight velvet-trimmed dress. She didn't have anything that she wanted to say, to do. If life would just pause, or if she could just continue rhythmically doing her chores, eating, sleeping, that would be better than making any changes.

She wanted a simple life. Drama, she'd decided, was something she was meant to avoid.

O

O

The little cell of a room stifled her, and she was seen outside in her free hours, more and more, be it day or night. To whatever natural lights she found in the back alleyway, she hunched over her thick volume. If a lady went out there, the girl abruptly shut the book and, as usual, did not make eye contact.

"Vanessa changed," they all agreed, "for the worse."

"Ungrateful little wench," Maggie scoffed, fanning herself as they waited for the night's customers to arrive. "Only once, all that money, a handsome man – who gave her that damn Bible anyway?"

"Father brought it by a ways back," Jenna explained. "Didn't think she'd take it so seriously. She didn't, before…"

"It's insulting to the rest of us," Kim snapped, face reddened.

"She wasn't strong enough, not like us," Jenna noted, hoping to change the subject a bit. Then, whispering, she added, "Madame's to get rid of her soon, I'd wager."

That cheered the girls up a bit. Having the sad girl around was a constant reminder of the pains they had to endure, of their own hidden guilts, if they had any.

O

O

Vanessa didn't hear them. She was out back, book open across her crossed legs, listening to the town as she remained grounded in dirt. At the distance from the main room, she couldn't make out what people were saying within, but it mattered not, for she had heard them say those things earlier, and would hear them again.

Patiently, she was waiting for the men to arrive, too, but for a different purpose. She could hear things, from inside the upper floor bedrooms, along the backside of the house. The women kept those windows open when entertaining in there, and from the back yard Vanessa could hear many things, that without looking she could study, could take note of and analyze.

With the book, with the sounds from above and behind her, with this silence, the wounds inside her were closing up.

She was almost ready to tell Madame – to tell her that she was ready to use her money.


	15. Big, Scary Man

Langston, Madame's house bouncer, was a tall, black man, of formidable size. He was the man she trusted the most, and he arrived every evening for the few hours that were busiest for the house ladies. With his stern expression and calm demeanor, he said little, and did little, simply standing aside should he be needed.

When they were first introduced, Vanessa displayed very obvious shock and fear – Madame could only assume that the girl had never come so close to someone so frighteningly powerful before. Actually, Vanessa had always thought the man to be a regular. Seeing him upon meeting, during early hours when no man visited, she was startled to wonder what a client was doing in the house at that hour, and why Madame so abruptly called her to face him. As expected of her, she curtsied to Langston, though she couldn't help but let her eyes avert from his, flitting upon his person quite rudely.

"Lucky you," Madame began with tight lips, drawing on her cigarette, "Langston is off to see family in July, and word has come from Dr. Moriko, with such low a price that the remains of your money will pay the surgeon, steamer fare for two, both ways, and Langston's fees."

Vanessa collected her thoughts and stared down at the man's shoes – scuffed brown boots, probably toma leather. "Madame, may I ask why I'm paying for a client's travels, no offense sir…"

"None taken," he replied, in his deep, deep voice. "But I am not a client."

"Langston's our bouncer, I am amazed you hadn't noticed that yet." Madame sighed.

"I have seen you here, I thought you were a client," Vanessa near-whispered. "What is a bouncer?"

"As I said, the girl is odd; quite thoroughly odd," Madame continued, holding her cigarette gracefully between her long, thin fingers. "Even sand steamers are dangerous for a traveling girl; alone you would surely be robbed of your money before reaching the good doctor. Langston will accompany you and ensure your safety."

"Madame, I have traveled alright on my own," Vanessa argued, still staring at the boots. Such large, formidable boots.

"Vanessa, I have been around long before you and perhaps will long after you, and I know this planet better than you could ever hope, or ever want to know," Madame snapped, tiring of the girl quicker than in the past. "A woman cannot trust a man, but you may trust Langston quite completely, I assure you. I want you to the doctor and back safely, pretty, to start your new life here. This is in our best interests, us 3 all. Understood?"

Not replying, not because she didn't understand (because she did) but because she didn't agree, Vanessa kept her head bowed low and listened to Madame's instructions for the trip. It was her thought that since this was her own money, she should make her own decisions, but clearly the world did not operate like that. People were all flawed, were none to be trusted. She wanted to travel alone. No matter what Madame said, Langston frightened her and she knew she wouldn't have wanted to trust her travels and her money to a man half his size, anyways.

O

O

In those times, sand steamers were small contraptions that could only travel at half the rate of a modern sand steamer. They were powered by a single bulb, but said bulb's output was small, as anything intense would break down the structure of the steamer itself. Routes were changed often, as could more easily be done with smaller vehicles, and robberies were less common. Steamers hadn't yet the size and wealth to contain anything but third class, and all tickets were high. Everyone piled in, elbow to elbow, with no seats or rooms save a restroom that emptied to the rushing ground. Luckily, food and drink was available onboard, and one could catch sleep by resting on the cold, metal floor. Vanessa and Langston were two of just one hundred fifty passengers on the steamer from October to July, on a 5-day trip.

In her boredom, Vanessa longed for the thick book she'd been convinced to leave at the house, though she didn't dare speak to her companion. Instead, she studied the other passengers closely from under her cloak hood. She didn't want to let her guard down, but it was impossible not to rest. Making a point to nap with her hood covering her, sitting up as though she were awake, she never rested when Langston was.

She feared for her money when he closed his eyes, as he did often, but she noted that he woke straight-away if even a fly dared touch his person. Her money was safe.

Since departing for the steamer days ago, she heard Langston's breath and voice betray subtle hints of a conversation-starter. But she dreaded speaking to him, and only replied in one-word statements or pretended to be sleeping, and thus Langston stopped attempting to talk to her after the first day.

Her fear subsided some with time. He was like a mountain of a man, a boulder against the wall beside her, an inch or two away but never touching. Every man who entered the house in October was a client – why was this man not? How could she trust him? Why, he could obviously snap her like a twig if he should so desire to, and being male she saw no reason to think him kinder than that. He could not be trusted, but she found that his size did not bother her so much as his gender.

O

O

On the last night, Vanessa was startled from a nap by a sound she couldn't identify, nor did the dark of night allow her to see the source of. From her corner of the steamer, she heard the man to her left whimper slightly, and it sounded as though Langston's breathing was quicker than usual. She peeked from beneath her hood to see what was about.

Langston's face was drawn up so cruelly that she startled backwards and hit her head back against the wall. The man's nostrils were flared some, mouth drawn tightly shut, with deep breaths forcing out the nose. His brows were drawn almost touching together in the middle, and his eyes glittered with malice. But he did not meet her gaze for long, and soon stared to her left, in the direction of the simpering man.

Evidently, her own breath quickened, and Langston must have heard it over the purr of the steamer engine and the slumbering sounds of the other passengers in this corridor. He turned back to Vanessa and his face softened some. "Did he hurt you?" he whispered as though holding back anger.

Hesitating, Vanessa glanced about and she began to piece things together. "I feel fine," she whispered, almost inaudibly.

He stood and took one step over her, to squat back down on the other side of her. The man at her left made a hasty escape toward the far end of the steamer, eliciting angry sounds from passengers he nudged on his way. Taking the man's place, Langston breathed out a large breath and wiped sweat from his brow.

Thinking for many minutes before saying anything, Vanessa's curiosity overtook her. "What did he…?"

"Reaching for you with not the purest intentions on his face," Langston whispered, staring off.

"What did you-"

"I uglied him some, taught him a lesson. Now you speak, eh?"

Vanessa felt a bit of embarrassment at that. "That is what I have paid you to do?"

"Part of it," Langston admitted in his low, bass whisper. "Steamer fare has covered most of my fee. But I am being paid for what I would do gladly for free, if a man could live that way."

"If I were strong as you, I think I would be better off," she thought aloud.

"Don't envy me; perhaps you are better off. I think it would be better to be a pretty girl than to be in a body that frightens everyone. To sleep, now, no need to wake anyone further."

Biting her lip from the things she suddenly felt the need to say, Vanessa's heartbeat wouldn't calm.

"If you were to talk to me in the daylight, I think that would be more pleasant," he added, then folding his arms took to a light nap.


	16. Patient

Until the steamer pulled into the July station, Vanessa sat enchanted as Langston dazzled her with simple tales of his encounters with bandits and criminals. He spoke with a certain flair, and though he was humble he liked to make elaborate descriptions in his stories. There were men with guns and strange, deformed things of men, and he mentioned a few times about the lost technology that people were learning to find new uses for, though there was much history and science that was gone from the minds of the current generations on Gunsmoke. Using a soft, deep voice meant not to bother the other passengers, he described events at length.

Langston was a man who'd lived in many places, who'd traveled to very distant towns and knew how to navigate the sands on foot. He spoke of the growth of major cities, that had boomed in recent years to nearly doubling in places.

He spoke of gunfights and bar brawls and injuries, and she could see some scars on his big, bare arms, and one on his cheek, and she could barely help but be astonished immensely by him.

In only a moment's instance, he let slip that he'd been treated as though not a person for most of his life, that he was naturally such a large man, so tall and strong, and that though being the muscle of a business or individual was a living to make, it was not what he truly wanted.

By second noon, she had one of his large hands in hers, and she was absentmindedly studying and fiddling with it as he spoke.

But only an hour after, they were in July, and Langston mentioned that they were late, and his family was worrying about him. He carried both their bags and walked in long strides towards the doctor, whose door was not far from the station. Upon knocking, a nurse-assistant came to greet them, expecting them. He took a bundle (most of the money, she assumed) from Langston. Before departing, Langston repeated that he would be back for the departing steamer in two week's time, and, hesitating, also slipped her a note with his family's information, should she need it. "Good luck," he bid her, and strode away.

O

O

Vanessa listened to the instructions of the assistant as she was led to her quarters. He was Nurse Anderson, though he wanted her to call him Andy. She was going to stay in a little room in the clinic, and would be brought meals, since she'd need to stay 24-7 where the doctor could find her. The room was small, but the bed comfortable.

"Doctor Moriko is gone for the evening," Andy continued, yawning, "I'm closing up. Goodnight."

Nodding, Vanessa took to staring at the white, plain walls of her room and daydreamed until she could sleep.

O

O

Her door burst open suddenly, and it must have been morning, though she hadn't a window to know.

"Vanessa, is it. Follow me to the exam room, we'll have a look at things."

Standing groggily, she stepped quietly to follow, eyes adjusting. She was led to a room lined with books on two walls, and found that she could only stare at these.

"Never seen so many at one time, I imagine," noted Dr. Moriko, a stout man with very shiny, cropped black hair and a thin mustache. "Go on, undress then, let's have a look," he added, shutting the door for privacy.

Staring at those books, reading their titles, Vanessa could barely feel the cold metal and such that touched her.

He snapped his fingers before her nose, for attention. "Now, miss, we'll be doing this in stages," he began, clearing his throat. Walking to a large slate against the wall, he chalked out his intentions simply. "Capping the front teeth on top and bottom, we can do that today, once I've gotten my supplies from the dentist down the road. It looks as though they've been crudely filed, but it's opened your inner tooth and the enamel is no longer where it needs to be. The molars we'll do next week, after the surgeries; want to leave you something to chew with while that's going on. The ears will be a delicate thing, yours are very much misshapen, so we'll do that in 2-3 surgeries, depending upon how many it takes, and I'd prefer to do that later next week. The one I'm concerned most with – your back – I would like to do an exploratory this afternoon, and depending upon the number of vessels feeding into it, and its nerve connection to the spine – well, we can perhaps do it in one fell swoop and then go back in a few days later to pretty up the edges of the graft. I'll be grafting skin from the mound to cover you back there, you see."

Now dressed, Vanessa sat in a strange, adjusting chair in the next room, and watched Andy arrange dental supplies. Daydreaming to ignore the discomfort, she sat while her teeth were capped. She thought of the books.

After a simple lunch, Vanessa found herself in the exam room again, staring at books as she lay under a half-sheet on the table, awaiting the exploratory. She was pricked with a needle to dull the area, and continued to gaze drunk at the volumes, letting them dance and swirl in her vision. Andy and Dr. Moriko mumbled things to each other as they poked and probed at the hump in her back, and the little streams of blood and fluids dripped down her ribs from the thing. She winced now and then, but was otherwise entranced by the bound papers.

Once the base of the hump had been thoroughly gone over, Dr. Moriko announced to Vanessa, where she lay still, that her deformity seemed a simple enough thing to extract. "I've a busy load this week, an emergency came up, so you'll have to wait until next Monday for surgery." With that, he was gone.

Andy remained, to bandage up the little wounds on her back. "Sorry for the wait – Moriko's 'emergency' is a wealthier woman than you, who's paying a lot for eye and forehead and cheek and neck-tightenings. People needing plastic surgery the most come second to the ones who have money and don't need it at all."

"May I read the books?" Vanessa asked as she dressed. "A week is a long time."

"Don't tell the doctor I said yes." Andy led her to her room. "I lock up at night and open in the morning; I'll keep this one open, but if Moriko sees a book missing, or mussed, I'm blaming it on you, OK?"


	17. Learning the Hard Way

The wealth of information in the books was a welcomed surprise. The intimidating collection kept her up all night, every night, sleeping in the daytime when there was nothing to read. She jotted notes in a notebook she'd bought from Andy in exchange for a few double dollars, and read so eagerly by candlelight that she was near-done with the texts by Sunday. They covered areas of human anatomical science that she had read before and knew completely, and also areas that she had been thirsting for – namely neuroscience. Overhearing the doctor speak, through the walls of her room that perhaps a normal person could not hear through, she came to realize that he was a doctor who did not use most of the books he had in his work; he primarily worked to improve the look of people, not the function.

Vanessa found herself suddenly very nervous and anxious when the dawn of her surgery came. She'd stayed up all night reading, losing track of time, but once Dr. Moriko came to call her into surgery it all flooded forth. She felt nauseous and couldn't help but smile with her newly-neat new smile.

Again, she received only a local for the procedure, which was painful and she didn't tell them so. She used thoughts of the texts to distract her, as her flesh was sliced away in one large piece, and dunked into a big glass jar of preserving liquid. Like in the books, he'll use it to study and learn, she told herself, before closing her eyes on the lump she was now rid of, sinking back into thoughts of synapses and spinal fluid and endorphines.

She felt weak, and couldn't keep her eyes open. Time passed, slowly and quickly, needle diving into flesh to sew up the hole. Someone carried her to her room and lay her down, and left her there with the door shut and no light inside.

Dr. Moriko left her care in Andy's hands, and when he brought her meals as usual, he also checked her vitals and changed her bandage, explaining that she'd lost more blood than expected and needed to eat more.

After the doctor had gone for the day, for the two nights after surgery, Andy brought her books from the exam room, himself, as he said she shouldn't be up. He slipped them back into place when he came in for the morning.

Moriko's appointment for a club-footed child, on Wednesday, was cancelled and he took the opportunity to have Andy bring in the hump specimen. Closing himself into a little room he normally used for autopsies, when needed, Moriko took out the specimen, smelling of chemicals and blood, and a notebook. He began, slowly, to dissect the thing and note its contents, expecting a tumor of some sort. What he saw was not a tumor, and his dissection became feverishly fast. As his hands shook, he peeled back a layer of muscle, of all things, round the mound at all sides, and found the small, headless corpse of a baby, with wing-like protrusions on its back and another strange wing-thing beside it. There were a few fingers with jagged nails, and some random teeth and little bones. When a layer of inner skin was pulled aside to reveal a pale blue eye, he stifled a scream, staggered back from the table, and fell to his knees in fright.

Closing the last of the books Andy'd brought her, Vanessa found herself wide awake early in the night. She tottered a bit feebly out of her room, into the exam room, to take back the books and get some she had yet to see.

"What do you have there?" a tired voice asked from the waiting area.

Startled, Vanessa thought to hurry back to her room, but she recognized this as being the doctor, and felt she should be honest. "I was going to read these; I'll be very careful with-"

Backing up against a wall, she watched the shorter man step forward and grab the top book from her arms. It was about brain abnormalities in the minds of the insane; the one below it was titled 'Advanced Pharmacology.' Shuddering, he dropped it back into her arms, and took the entire stack from her, tossing it roughly into a nearby waiting chair. "What, are you looking at the pictures?"

"N-no, I study, um, I read about medicine, and I, I-"

"You can't understand these," he interrupted, because he knew he was a smart man, a learned man, of over 40 years experience in various fields of medicine, but even he could not understand all the books in his library.

"I-I do, sir, I, I've read about, your skin, you seem, I think you might have, have skin cancer, from sun damage, your forehead…I've read, the cure, um, you-"

"Be silent. Sit in this chair here."

Obeying, confused, she did so. "Doctor, it's awfully late, I thought you went home-"

"I will," Dr. Moriko announced, seating himself across from her, rubbing his eyelids with his hand. "I'm meeting someone here, then I'm going home. Now not another word from you."

Vanessa was quiet, but she became filled with fear, and her breath quickened and she could hardly be still. Something was terribly wrong. She could feel it, could hear it in his voice and breath, could almost smell and taste it. Through the thick blanket round her shoulders, she shivered, and as her throat tightened she gasped for breath.

"Stop it," he growled at her, in the dark."

She didn't know what to stop doing. Her head felt faint, like the blood loss from days before, and she felt dizzy, as though the room spun.

One hand knocked on the door, but she could hear more than one set of feet shuffling about just outside.

"I can't help you anymore," Dr. Moriko murmured as he stepped to open the door. "These people are going to help you."

Several people of various ages and sizes stepped inside and grabbed her arms and shoved her towards the door, though she fell twice, and the doctor did not meet her eyes as she was taken outside. Tossed roughly onto the cobblestones of the main road, she smelled the burn of torches and candles some of the crowd carried for light. Things became a blur.

Boots with angry feet inside plunged themselves into the sides of her body, spit landing on her, the air growing hot and stifling from the surrounding wall of bodies. She yelped, blows landing on her back, blinding her with pain. Vanessa didn't see how this was helpful.

The people's shouts included words like demon, witch, devil, Satan, whore, and things like that. They roared and laughed and women shrieked and a blow from a foot small enough to be a toddler landed her in the cheek. Passing in and out of consciousness, she was unaware for how long this lasted, nor where she was, as she felt dragged at a point.

Rough texture of something like a rope wound loose about her and it occurred to her that waiting for it to end was perhaps not an option. The ending of this would be violent, she guessed, and when she smelled chemicals poured onto a heap of garbage near her, chemicals she knew could both power trucks and set fires, she heard the chants, 'burn, witch, burn her,' and through the pain of blows that had stopped by then she knew she had to get away. Standing up abruptly, she felt rope slide away from her ankles and she broke into a run away from the crowd, leaping into and over the garbage pile, for that was the only direction with no people. There was a sudden whoosh-sound behind her, and the garbage pile began to burn about her, singing her feet as she fled. The hem of her night-dress caught fire.

A torch fell beside her, and another hit her in the lower back, felling her to her knees for the moment before she rose and dashed away, falling over the edge of the sand dune. She tumbled and paused to gather what wits she could find, and then raced as well as she could muster to into the desert, arms still tied. The sounds of the crowd stayed where they were, save a few feet running up to chuck things at her, and they softened and died away, yelling, some of them, as she disappeared over dunes.

"Don't come back!"


	18. Don't Bother

Langston woke on a mild morning to the sweet smells of his mother's cooking. He rose from his cot and hummed to himself as he dressed, stepping briskly to the outhouse before the meal.

Almost to the door, he saw a figure rise from behind a jumble of building tools propped beside the outhouse. He went to stand authoritatively close to this stranger, about to demand that they leave.

"Lang…It took all, all night to, to find you," a weak, feminine voice sounded from beneath a ragged sheet of cloth. "Can we, I need to leave."

"Come inside, breakfast is almost ready. The steamer isn't due for a few days; why the rush?" he asked, stepping round the pile of things to usher her indoors. She wasn't standing steady, so he grabbed for her shoulder to help her out.

She pulled away and stepped out on her own. After only a few steps toward the house, she fell.

Langston instinctively rushed to her and saw the skin of her legs, her stomach, her arms, showing due to holes in the clothing she wore, with singed edges, he saw the bruises and dried blood and burns. "I'm rushing you back to the doctor," he muttered, lifting her up as she winced.

"He made them hurt me, don't, I have to hide, I have to go," she muttered, passing out again as she felt the cool shade of a house surround her.

Staring down the closed door of a modest building, Langston wiped sweat from his brow, the mid-day suns blazing. He knocked again, to no avail, and sighed softly to himself. Playing it calm, he stepped across the way into the shade of a little noodle stand and asked for an ice water.

"He's here for her," the cook whispered to a waitress, almost out of range for him to hear. "Dropped her off, last week. Not a doubt."

Hesitantly, the petite, tanned waitress stepped gingerly over with his water, and stood after, clearing her throat.

Langston waited.

"Sir, are you looking for the girl at the clinic?"

He looked up. "I am to escort young miss back to the city," he replied, keeping his face stern and his voice free of emotion. Langston knew to play it safe, play the dumb brute people assumed him for.

The waitress, 'Tasha' as said her little, white nametag, turned over her shoulder to mouth something back to the cook, and shifted her weight as she looked back to the large man. "Sir, you'd best forget about her," the girl whispered, leaning down as if to wipe the table clean, "She was in cahoots with the devil."

"Really?"

"Can you believe it; living amongst us! She was carried off last night - no need to worry. I feel better, today, that's for certain. Sir, best forget about that one, be thankful you're clear of evil now."

Momma shook her head, sadly, not lifting her eyes to meet her sons'. She continued to sweep away sand and bits of ash from about the floor, working the stuff out towards the back door. Outside, she could be alone to speak with him, where the big, dark eyes of his brothers and sisters wouldn't see.

"I think something inside's ruptured," Momma whispered, sighing weakly. "Wrist's swollen all up like it's broken, with a fever, and her collarbone's shaped funny on one side; but inside, something's wrong. Only breathing with one lung, skin turning yellow. It's not looking good for her, son."

"Where's the nearest clinic out of town?" he asked, mostly to himself.

"Oh, son, let her go. We've got worries enough. Sheltering a thing like her, sure, I can understand why you do it, but she may be deceiving us, too. Let her go." The warm woman patted his arm and cast him a concerned glance.

"Yes, Momma."

By nightfall, Langston hadn't yet left the girl's room, and still no one was allowed in. The kids, ears to the door, heard rustling around after a bit, and their eldest brother emerged, finally, with knapsack over his shoulder and cloak on. "Bus leaving from Tinnison in the morning, so I'm out now. Sorry I have to leave so soon."

Momma gazed imploringly over his shoulder.

"She's dead. I need to get her out of here before anyone finds out. I'll take the body with me, bury it out in the middle of the desert."

"Keeping the spirit out of the house, good thinking, son."

All did their good-byes hastily, nervously. It was quite a relief to get the stranger out of the house, and Momma told the children to avert their eyes as Langston rode into the evening desert on a little, rented toma-drawn cart.

Langston paid the small-town surgeon only half his fee up front, and threatened to do 'worse than take a refund' if he worked any less than his best on the girl. Understanding well enough, the surgeon longed once more to work in a big city hospital where he wouldn't have to deal with this crap, but he nodded and hurried to mend the girl. And he knew not to ask 'why', because he was on the outskirts, and he knew better.

The girl, who Langston did not name, was nearly dead, and it went against the surgeon's better judgement to do a thing at all – but the money was good.

He drained fluids from a collapsed lung with a little plastic tube, and he opened her up to sew tight a ruptured set of kidneys, all while Langston watched, unflinching.

Ignoring requests to rest, to finish later, Langston demanded the deed be completed, and stared the surgeon down as he stiched up the edges on the large, grafted wound on her back, that had come loose in flaps of flesh. Langston had already stiched up some open gashes here and there, himself, as he had also set her shoulder. But he didn't know how to do the rest, and as he eyed the woman surgeon splint up a wrist, and hoped she could be trusted when she said the collarbone and ribs and remainder injuries would heal on their own.

Langston stayed for about 24 hours, at which point the nameless patient was stable and breathing and able to take liquids. Then, ignoring the surgeon's advise, he scooped up the tall, thin, fair, mysterious girl in his arms and left town, leaving behind no story, no name – only a bundle of double dollars.


	19. Just Another Loss

Vanessa was unaware of the date or location, but she gained strength to sit up and open her eyes. Langston was speaking about some interesting stories, and she did not interrupt him. She ate and drank and listened, propped in a humble cot in a truly humble hotel room of some sort, listening to the tales of a very large black man, seated in the opposite corner.

She felt that she was healing, and could only guess at what injuries she'd had and been treated for (by whom?). Frankly, she had no intention to ask Langston what happened after she passed out, that last time in his family's house. That was a tale she didn't care to know.

His words grew groggy and he excused himself to nap in the chair, sitting as formidably as ever. Eventually, she slipped into sleeping as well.

Again, she awoke to the sound of a story, but the story ended abruptly when she sat up.

"Your color is back. You can walk, now?"

Trying it, she stepped around the room. "I suppose so."

He stood. "I am expected back at Madame's, and will be late. I'll be setting out on foot and you're welcome to follow me to the next town, but only that. Everyone thinks you are dead, and it's safest you stay that way. There are traveling clothes for you, and I've gotten our supplies in order; the little remaining of your money is sewn into the inside of the cloak. I would recommend that as a trick of traveling."

She dressed as he covered his eyes with his hand, and listened as he went over more details. They departed into the desert, and Vanessa listened as closely as she could to every word he had for her, every instruction and description. By the time she dozed off for the night in their meager little dune campsite, she had learned to read the stars and test the air for weather; to dig for minerals one could eat if one had do. Conserving water, dried foods, proper clothing, she all absorbed this as best she could, because, as Langston hinted, traveling on foot would be something she would need to do an endless number of times in her life.

OOO

"Prep Mrs. Young for C-section," midwife Winnifred instructed her apprentice, tying her long, gray hair atop her head.

"Yes ma'am," her apprentice replied, already having given Mrs. Young the necessary remedies. Her own hair was already pinned up, tight and neat as could be in braids swirled round the sides and back of her skull. With skilled hands, she did as needed to be done.

"Begin." The older woman checked the patient's pulse and watched as her apprentice took charge of the surgery. In fact, Winnifred did hardly a thing until the baby was out, and she took to stitching things closed as her apprentice washed the baby and coaxed it to cry.

Winnifred was a midwife with many decades experience. She used to do these things herself. Presently, her apprentice took this over, "For practice" she announced. She and her apprentice had an unspoken rule betwixt them – the young girl had better luck with some dangerous things, so she wrote out the remedies and preformed the surgeries. Winnifred took the credit, and her apprentice took home 40 of the midwife fees. This was the way things were, and had been, and thus there was no explanation of the origin and education of this strange girl, nor any question that Winnifred was truly the midwife.

Vanessa was only an apprentice.

"Thank you, Miss Winnifred," the happy new father whispered, taking his son in his arms.

"My pleasure, sir," she replied, smiling in her warm, wrinkled way.

Carrying the tools and bottles of their trade in her arms, the apprentice stood back, eyes flitting about the Young's home as she followed the midwife out.

"Let her sleep for a few days, don't let her lift a finger. I'll send Vanessa to check on her periodically."

Bowing her head as they left, Vanessa followed the elder woman through the streets of the small town of Greenwich. She watched all about her, near tripping once or twice on a bump in the walkway. Once she'd carried Winnifred's things up to the old lady's home, washed them, tucked them away in the cabinet, she took her part of the earnings and mumbled, 'goodbye.'

Nodding, Winnifred did not watch her leave. "Someone will run for you in short time; Mrs. Young's sister is due any moment as well."

Vanessa did not reply. She walked tall, postured like a normal person, and she was normal as far as anyone could see. These days, her dress was plain and of a dark blue, sleeves cut to her elbows, skirt to the ground, and neckline modestly high.

Closing the door of her little, rented house, she stepped softly to a floorboard, and, lifting it, pulled out the tin of cash she'd saved over many months in this dreary place. The dark red crust under her nails was ignored, as she thumbed through the bills to count, to tally, to see that she was nearly to her goal. Though she didn't intend to let anyone know that she was soon to leave, she was, and would never see Winnifred again.

OOO

Eyeing the ladies like the hawk he was paid to be, Langston stood firm as stone at his post within the corner window of the main room. The whites of his eyes stood out stark against the shadows, as his own deep-hued skin blended with the darkness of the night. Breathing out a deep breath, his thoughts turned to the strange, blonde girl. He wondered if she was dead yet, and wondered if she was what he remembered her to be.

The women of Madame's house displayed little emotion at the announcement of Vanessa's passing. Madame was stoic as ever as she somberly recited the gist of what had occurred in July. Langston said not a word, not to anyone but Madame in private, and that was how she knew the story. He'd been careful to leave out details that would come round to bite him in the end – no one knew that he'd sheltered her after the mob, that he'd taken her to the doctor and led her to safety. And though he scarce believed it himself, he told her about the reason for the riotous mob.

"They killed our little Vanessa out of fear, ladies," Madame spoke, crossing her arms as she let the details she'd just revealed sink in. "Whether she was a witch or a demon or whatever or not, remember who she was here. Remember, though we are safe in this house, this world is dangerous. Think of it – July – our most prosperous city! Civilized, my ass." Drawing deep upon her slim cigarette, Madame had stepped away, leaving the women to whisper.

Langston saw it in their faces, in the lines around their eyes. The women could try to hide their fear, but it was apparent to him. They were wondering what it would feel like to die like that.

But the people on Gunsmoke, their skin was thick. One could scarce grow up without seeing some atrocity or another. You could either get used to it, to the futility of doing anything against the tide of injustice, or you could practice with a gun until your fingers bled, lift weights until your arms hung strange, and seek out cybernetic enhancements. Whatever the case, the mob-killing of a young orphan girl was something Langston knew would not affect anyone all that much.

Still, he thought of her often.

"Langston, another loiterer…"

Jessa's whispered request brought Langston from his memories, out onto the front porch. Slipping past the ruffled, laced ladies, he stood formidably before a bundled traveler. "Move along now," Langston's deep whisper commanded.

The figure stood still for a moment, thin and tall, wrapped head to foot in traveling wrappings and cloak. Removing goggles with gloved hands, the figure's oceanic eyes blinked up at him and a hand went to grasp his hand. "Sorry, then," the figure croaked, stepping off of the house porch.

Striding back to his post within the house, Langston saw that the ladies were busy with their wiles and work. They hadn't noticed the paper note the figure had slipped into Langston's hand, nor did they observe him hastily read it within.

'Good Samaritan:

In secret, please meet me in the back after Last Call. I will match Madame's salary to you, plus 50, to have you as my bodyguard. I have the funds to pay up front; we should leave to stay in another town.'


	20. Sacrilege

It was still and private in the back alley, where the figure stepped up to Langston's spot against the wall. The face wrappings lay loose about her neck, but a hood was up to conceal her identity.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Will you accept my offer?" Drawing a bundle of double dollars from within her cloak, she folded them into his fist and waited for him to count them.

He did not. "It requires more thought. Leaving means losing a steady job. There are far fewer guarantees, to work for you. And what can I tell my family, when I write them letters to tell them about my deposits for them? Will we even be somewhere that has post?"

"IT happens every night, in my dreams. I feel that it will happen any day, again. But I trust you, and I don't think it'll happen if you're-"

"Learn to shoot a gun," he hissed.

"Will one gun stave off that many people?" she asked, half-sweetly, half-desperately. Besides, she thought, she'd already wasted enough money on the gun and bullets she'd practiced with for the past year, which she sold before coming to October because she couldn't use it. Her aim never improved with practice, because she couldn't keep her eyes open and couldn't handle the recoil. And when it would come time to use it, she didn't trust herself to have the solidity of mind to have it at the ready, in steady hand.

They leaned against the wall of the house, beside one another, listening to the winds and the sounds of each other's breath.

"Meet me here again tomorrow night, let me know what you think," Vanessa asked. "Whatever the answer, I'd really like my things," she asked, referring to the few personal effects she'd left behind.

"Alright then, you hurry along," he insisted, taking her hands in his own. The wad of money was pushed into her palms. "This is yours to hold onto."

OOO

The day passed, and the night nearly, too, and the tall, thin woman met with the tall, large man again. Nodding, he murmured that he would leave with her that night, that he would accept her offer. He handed her a bundle, from which she pulled out a large book and clutched it to her chest, smiling. They navigated the alleys toward Langston's rented room, so that he may assemble his traveling gear.

Moonlight glinted off the embossed title of the volume she held tightly. 'The Bible.' The book was too heavy to be carrying around, but he couldn't say a thing. She would eventually discard the thing for practicality, but until then he hoped she could enjoy the Good Book while she could. His family had only had a ratty copy, and they were lucky to have one at all.

OOO

Yawning again, Langston brought the last of his filled canteens up to his room, where Vanessa sat beside a lamp, eyes racing over the pages of her Bible. Now and then, she took her pencil to a page, taking notes by the passages, he assumed.

"We should rest before we leave," Vanessa mumbled from behind her book. "You're too tired."

He opened his mouth to argue, he knew she was right, because he'd taught her that in the first place. "I don't think I can sleep. But I'll lie still a moment," he agreed, easing onto his side on the cot. His eyes closed and he took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes, his vision was blurry, his mouth thick and dry. He felt as though he'd fallen asleep, but how could that be?

Vanessa was sitting a foot away, face hidden behind the text. "Lie still, Langston, you've only gotten an hour. You could use more." Dropping the book open in her lap, she tucked her hair behind her pointed ears and bent down over the pages.

Struggling to sit up, he found his strength sapped from his limbs, his chest. His eyes could hardly stay open. "I think we should go."

"We can leave after you're rested," she insisted, speaking as though through gritted teeth. She let out a little muffled grunt.

At that moment, Langston's limbs crumpled beneath him, and he fell onto a pile on the floor.

"Oh, I'm sorr…um, are you ok!" Vanessa panted out, leaning forward on her palm to finger his pulse. She was breathing quickly, and little beads of sweat stood out on her forehead.

Strength and senses dulled considerably, Langston could only slightly open his eyes and mumble out some question. From where he lay on the floor, he could see her text, still open but fallen upon her folded knees and the floor. The lines on the pages came into focus as he squinted his eyes, only inches from it.

"I can't lift you back up, but here," she said, sliding a pillow under his head, "you can sleep on the floor…I guess…"

Weakly lifting his hand up to his face, he turned a page, and another, and another, and another. Rip!

Reacting as the page tore out, Vanessa pulled her book away from his hand. Shocked, she slid the torn paper back into the volume.

Using his elbow to try to climb back up, Langston's eyes were still glossed over. "You ARE!"

"Huh?"

"You demon, you WITCH!" he shouted out in horror. "The Word of the Lord transformed into hexes and curse!"

"N-no, I bleached it and-"

"You TRICKED me!"

She paused. She supposed, yes, she did. Grabbing her book, she moved for the door.

Langston's face contorted into anguish. "Come HERE!"

Frowning, she recognized the look on his face, as the same as the people wore in July as they beat her. He wasn't looking at her like she was human anymore. "I was only testing out a theory," she whispered, "I was helping you, not hurting you," she stated sadly, staring down at her book intensely.

Langston's booming words quieted until he fell unconscious.

Vanessa wasn't confident that the effect would last. Though she was very tired from the effort of making Langston sleep, she pulled on her travel gear hastily. She hurried out of the inn and into the dark desert, hoping to be well away before someone came for her.


	21. The Last Date

Sobbing, chest heaving in the cold night, Vanessa huddled in her little tent, shivering, daring not to make a fire lest the smoke leave a trail. She couldn't get the image of Langston out of her mind. He was so important. He was special. And now, he hated her.

She cried out of self-pity, that much she could tell. But not for injury or flight – she was deeply affected by the knowledge that she could never see Langston again. Never again would she feel the ease and comfort and warmth she had when around him.

She was longing to be with him, and in ways they'd never actually touched. This was in the books, the ones she found boring. To define it by texts, Vanessa came to accept that she'd been in love with Langston.

Without Langston in her life, knowing that he was out there HATING her – her chest hurt terribly and she wondered if she would die.

OOO

In those days, the generation who remembered the aftermath of the Great Fall was elderly and dying off. The term 'lost technology' came to mean anything that Gunsmoke citizens could not reverse-engineer from the wreckage, and everything that they could no longer understand. Among such things were the plants, around which every town and settlement grew. The largest concentrations of plants yielded the largest cities, and at the time these were really not terribly big cities at all. But they were growing steadily, as nutrition and shelter (thanks to the plants) allowed them to have many children, children who did not die in their early years. The population growth rate was steadily increasing, as were the towns.

But, at that point, there were still few towns and cities. The population primarily settled in the big cities, with very few smaller towns.

Thus, Vanessa had few places to go, in these early days. The places where people might remember what she was (whatever she was, she wondered) were places she could not risk to journey to again. Not until she'd aged some, so that people wouldn't recognize her.

She wandered for a few years, taking odd jobs and hiding herself and generally trying to blend in. But people always found out. Her ears would show or she'd say something that would put people off, and she'd be run out of whatever town she was in. Growing somewhat used to the insults and rock throwing and roughing up and occasional unwanted advances, she went to the place where she'd first been called names. Vanessa returned to Haven.

But it wasn't to reminisce. On the contrary, she avoided the side of town where Greta lived. She only came to that town because she'd gotten wind of a need for a nurse at the little clinic that Dr. Chang's successor was setting up. Haven had grown by a third of its previous size (it'd been only seven years since she'd left!). Dr. Garret did, in fact, need a nurse. And Vanessa got the job, under an assumed name of Ness, of course.

She learned that Greta had died of disease, and that her husband and boys had left the town before she arrived. The children who'd teased her at school and the few other people she'd met there sometimes came to the clinic for this or that, but to Vanessa's great relief, none seemed to recognize her at all. She wasn't the hunchbacked, awkward, naïve girl they once knew.

In the clinic in Haven, Vanessa studied workings of the body she'd only had theories about previously. She managed to fill most of the pages in her book with diagrams and equations. She'd gouged the former title of the book out of the cover and spine long ago, to avoid any more…problems. It was the most important thing she owned and was at all times at her hip, secure within the leather straps of a converted gun holster, should she need it.

And need it she often did.

The pages did things to people. She was sure of it. After wondering about it constantly as a midwife's assistant, and after proving it to be true once she'd gotten the book back, Vanessa proved to herself, secretly, time and time again that the pages did things to people, whatever she wanted. It wasn't easy, and each page took forever to draw up, and when she used them on people it made her quite tired. When Dr. Garrett left for the night and she was alone with the patients too sick to go home, she used the book on them. At first, she made mistakes, and some people got worse. A few died. But she gradually improved, and so did the patients.

Dr. Garrett was praised as a miracle worker those who'd passed through his clinic. He was humble, and insisted that people thank modern medicine. People also thanked their Lord, whom they credited for answering their prayers and healing the sick. And they insisted that Dr. Garrett and his nurse were doing 'God's work.'

Vanessa wondered about the implications of that. She wondered what place a god had in the world. It wasn't anyone altering those people's bodies but her. She was alone with the patients, alone with the book.

She was very, very alone.

Patients told her she was beautiful. She doubted they'd say that if she undid the braids and pins in her hair veiling her ears. They warned her she'd become an 'old maid,' that she should date. Young and old men alike made propositions, offered dates. She even went on a few, but sometimes things didn't go well. Once in a while she'd find herself in a bad situation.

There was something about men, she came to understand, that if they could overpower a woman, get her alone, grab at her, they thought it was fun. They didn't offer money, like at Madame's, and there was no security around, like at Madame's. They just wanted to touch and take and have, and they didn't care that she said, 'no.' Out of a total twelve dates she went on, four ended like that (the remaining eight were boring and awkward but otherwise harmless). The book and her struggling got her out of it thrice. She'd make them fall asleep or lose their balance or something simple like that. The remaining instance was something she tried not to think of, or only in medical terms. Will had forced her to do…something…to him, and then he let her go.

Vanessa wrote up a special page, just for Will.

Will came down with testicular cancer shortly thereafter. He would've died, had Dr. Garrett not removed both of his testicles. In truth, Vanessa knew the cure, with or without her book, but she said nothing. When he recovered, she found herself disappointed, and considered making another page for Will.

Needless to say, she accepted no more dates after Will's.


	22. It's You

"What's this?"

Dr. Garrett grinned, opening the leather kit he was holding out to her. "15 years ago today, you started working here. Well, Ness, I thought you deserved a gift for that." In truth, he felt guilty for not having given her anything before. She refused his offers to have dinner with his family whenever invited, and since she didn't remember her date birth, he couldn't give her anything for that, either.

Gazing in the bag, Vanessa noted the various tools and consumables. This was a doctor's bag, almost matching the one Dr. Garrett used for house calls. "Thank you, Doctor," she smiled, accepting his gift.

"I thought we might up your salary again; what do you say Dr. Ness?"

"But I'm not a-"

Garrett waved his hand dismissively. "Well that's what I'm calling you from now on, anyhow. You can join me in surgery, and make house calls on your own, and-"

"I'd rather not," she interrupted. "Make house calls. By myself."

Dr. Garrett paused, then nodded, slowly. He paused to clean his glasses. "Of course, of course. Ness, I see you everyday; I think I take your looks for granted. Not easy being a gorgeous young woman in this world, is it?" he added sympathetically.

She knew his concern was genuine. Although she'd never said a word to anyone about what had happened to her, due to her looks, somehow Dr. Garrett always seemed to understand. When she requested the afternoon off because certain people were coming in for appointments, he didn't question it. When she began turning down dates (years ago) he didn't think it odd. He told her a story once, after treating a young woman for sexual injuries, that he'd had a daughter who was raped and killed by a gang when traveling. It changed the way he looked at pretty women, he'd said, as a tear rolled down his wrinkled cheek.

"And you have it ever the more difficult, don't you Ness – you know I don't believe you look a day older than when first we met!"

Vanessa blushed, looking down as she clutched the medical bag nervously. She wished he'd stop mentioning that. 15 years ago, she'd started there, when Dr. Garrett's hair was brown and back was straight. His hair became gray, his back crooked, his wrinkles showing his age, yet she honestly had not changed. It was supposed to be a blessing, but would become a curse.

Dr. Garrett laughed aloud, a gentle laugh. "No wonder the ladies in town won't be friends with you, they're all jealous!"

Face reddening more, Vanessa's mind raced to change the subject. "Who's our first this morning?" she called out to their receptionist, Dennis.

"All business again this morning, eh, Ness," Dr. Garrett mumbled, sighing as he pulled on his lab coat. The girl was quiet and cold, but she got the job done. He wondered what her story was, to make her like she was, but he would never ask and she would never tell.

---

"I knew I should have tied my cloak closer. You'd think, after traveling as much as we do, I'd get better at it! Ouch!"

"It won't heal unless I get the sand out," Dr. Ness mumbled in reply, tweezing out a grain from the sand burn on Moira's ankle. The middle aged woman was rather loud, and annoying her as she worked. "You should use wrappings next time."

"Huh?"

Rinsing the reddened area again, Vanessa spoke up a bit. "In principle, you need the loose cover of a hood, a cloak, boots, that sort of thing. But to keep the sand out completely you need to wear tight wrappings, tight clothing underneath, all over."

"Really, doctor, you're lucky you've got this nice, cool office. Traveling is so harsh," Moira sighed. "My husband needs to get out of this business!"

"Oh, give me a break," the man in question sighed, stepping into the office. "We're set up at the inn, I'm going to go wait in the front till you're done."

"Look at it, hon, it's worse than I'd thought."

"Actually, ma'am, it looks worse than it is. You'll have a new layer of dermis in no time." She turned away to mix up an herbal paste for the wound.

"See, there? You shouldn't have insisted on coming with me this time," Moira's husband huffed.

"Well how was I to know we wouldn't have a ride the full way?"

"That's the way things are outside the city," he replied, sounding somewhat impatient.

"Excuse me if this is the only vacation from the kids I ever get," Moira snapped in a hushed tone.

Vanessa could hear them through her bundled hair, so clearly because her ears were so sensitive. But she didn't care to hear this, didn't care to be a part of anyone's life. She wanted them to leave. Swiveling to apply the paste to Moira's ankle, she ignored the lady's shudder and angry whispering. Damn this woman, she thought, damn her, that she has found a safe life and a safe man but complains about it all.

"I've goods to sell to pay you."

Hesitating, Vanessa glanced up to see that he was addressing her.

Reaching out to shake her reluctant hand, he smiled. "I'm good for it. Don't worry."

She looked him in the eyes to see that he wasn't lying, which he didn't seem to be. "Alright, then," she replied, turning away the moment he got 'that' look on his face. He'd gone pale and jaw slack all the sudden, there, and she hoped, again, that they'd just leave already.

---

Walking alone, alert, to her isolated little house at the edge of town, Vanessa clutched her volume to her chest and took in all that her peripheral vision allowed.

But she didn't notice the man standing in a shadow along the way.

"Vanessa."

Her blood turned cold and she hastened her step. She saw him, but chose not to look. Turning pages, she squinted in the moonlit street.

"Vanessa, it's me – Marcus."

The name seemed familiar, but to her familiar was usually a bad thing.

"I was little when you met me – you fixed my broken arm. You lived in our barn."

"Leave me be, you've mistaken me for someone else."

"No," he insisted, striding alongside her now. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, but the page hadn't taken full effect yet. "I know you. I remember."

She heard no ill will in his voice. Shutting her book, she continued to march quickly towards her home. "I don't care for anyone here to know me by that name, please," she whispered.

"You remember me, then. I've had dreams you were out there, I prayed you wouldn't die in a gutter – but look at you, a doctor!" Hands in his pockets, he sounded nervous, but happily excited. "I want to, to apologize for the way everyone treated you all that time. I wish I could have made them stop."

Mounting the steps to her door, she paused.

"You were beautiful and something special, and I was the only one who could see that. After you left I missed you something awful," he mumbled, shifting in the sand. "Well, I just wanted to tell you that, I guess."

Staring down at her hand on the door handle, she smiled. "You were nicer to me than anybody has ever been."

After a long, still silence, Marcus cleared his throat. "Secret's safe with me. Goodnight, then."

"Come in, please," she called as he turned away.

Smiling, he nodded, and stepped inside.


	23. Things Get Worse

"Dang it, gonna be late again," Marcus grumbled, running a hand through mussed hair. Sand particles danced in the soft sunlight streaming in through curtained windows, dancing around him as he pulled on his overalls.

Vanessa sighed. "Just a little longer?"

"Want somebody to get suspicious?" he asked over his shoulder, searching for his boots on the floor of her little house. "We've been at this for weeks, it's a wonder no one's figured us out. Good thing Moira's so self-absorbed, she might smell you on me."

Scowling, Vanessa lay back against pillows. She'd never understand why people wasted time in commitments that sapped their lives slowly away.

"Don't let me fall asleep next time, ok?"

She nodded, but probably wouldn't. It was more fun than she'd thought, to have sex with someone (that she remembered), but it was just as good to have someone to sleep beside afterward.

--

"I'll come to see you."

"No, you won't." He wasn't arguing, he was telling her. "This was good when it lasted. I have kids. I have a wife. You know that."

"Yes, but we can be discreet, like we did here-"

"Vanessa, I have to go. I love you. I will always love you in my dreams." Kissing her softly, he gripped her hands and let them go, not turning back to look at her as he walked briskly away.

Surely that wasn't the end, she thought.

He loves me.

He'll come back.

--

Marcus never came back. The cold, hard truth of it didn't hurt as badly as with Langston, perhaps because Marcus left without hating her. It seemed almost a learning experience, she decided, one that left her with a greater understanding of happiness. It gave her a reason to smile to people, to joke with children to make them laugh through their checkups, to think that life was not simply an endless game of who will use who next.

Finally, Vanessa could stay in Haven no longer, and it came time to move on. People thought her incredibly odd already, and it was best not to let them see the growing contrast between their aging bodies and her timeless form any longer than they'd already had.

She stayed on long enough to see her successor trained and to take over the clinic. That took long enough, several years, and so before her 20th anniversary working in Haven she was off.

For a while, she took a break from medicine. In Greendale, she tried her hand at weaving. In Dryden, cooking. At each new town – each safe town – she stayed a month or a year or whatever she fancied, each time eyes open. She stared down and studied each person around her with interest and fear, all at once. Settling upon a place or a business with someone honest enough to be safe around, she would take up some trade or other. Pretending to be stupid, to be docile, she survived well enough. If being herself was so dangerous, she would simply become someone else, someone far less interesting, make mistakes on purpose and use small words.

And she knew when it was time to move on. If a customer or passerby or any sort of grown man looked too long, too often, she made note, and that was her cue to leave the town.

Trouble was, the world around her changed over time, and on Gunsmoke things always changed for the worse.

Tales of desert pirates, ferocious criminals, the just-as-strange bounty hunters out to nab them, stories of towns diminished by disease, poverty, particularly nasty sandstorms...these were things a person would overhear every day. Not all was to be believed, but most was. Vanessa hadn't noticed that the frequency and severity of casualties and horrors in the stories had increased some over time, but when word came to Bridesdale one windy day that Cirra'd been leveled, she was shocked into that realization.

"Dogs and chickens. Babies. Everybody. Sliced up. Like...oh, God...like sandwich meat."

Vanessa halted where she stood, turning to the crowd outside the tiny Bridesdale sheriff's station. Stepping slowly past a few tall fellows, she craned to be sure she heard that right.

The people around her were pale. A few shook their heads. "Bullshit."

"My brother saw it with his own eyes, sir, and it is God's honest truth," insisted Mitchell, the town's runner. He spoke up to be heard over the increasing number of upset citizens he was attracting. "Cirra always was so isolated, the way they were, nobody found nothing till what my brother says is a few days after it happened. But the evidence showed it. Everyone and everything, the buildings, solid stone buildings and metal tubes thick as a man's waist, cut in such a way...And all those people..."

In her peripheral view, Vanessa saw a few of the men and women cross themselves superstitiously. She made haste to copy the motion.

A hush fell and someone let a soft whimper as Mitchell held out an object in his palm. There was a third of a brick there, rough with mortar and the ravages of the weather upon its sides, splattered with paint – no, not paint - crimson, a horrible crimson red. And one side was cut, smooth as glass, catching the light as though it were polished metal.

Beside her, a large woman choked on a sob. The man in front of her shuddered.

Vanessa felt chills. What could do this? What weapon, what tool? How many men, if men, because surely nothing but a man could...

"Demon"

"God protect us"

"Curse"

"The devil himself"

Muttered, then agreed, then shouted, these words repeated, and the group was nodding, shaking their heads, wringing fists against their chests. The energy became red hot. Vanessa had to step back, out of the fray. Touching the hair over her 'demonic' ears, she felt faint.

Shuffling directly to the tiny room she was renting from the town tailor, she grabbed her traveling gear and hastened her exit from the town. She didn't speak to a soul on her way out. Each sandy footstep let her breathe a little easier. Her mind raced, heart pounding. What could do that to a town, she had no clue. The technology didn't exist. But the more she thought on it, the more she felt that it didn't really matter who did it, or what did it. Or why. Hell, she had seen the darker side of people, and those people may have deserved it. Fact was, it happened, and without an easy, rational explanation for such a horrific thing, regular folk would think how folk tended to think. That if they didn't know the answer to something, it must be God or the devil or some such agent of one or the other.

Vanessa didn't want to be beaten to cries of 'demon!' ever again. Because if she were, the next time, she figured, she wouldn't be as likely to live through it. Not anymore.

--

She tried to keep to the wilderness as much as she could, after Cirra and a couple more subsequent "Demon Blade" massacres threw the people of Gunsmoke into an angry, fearful, religious fervor.

Trouble was, traveling in the desert wasn't as lonely as it used to be. In earlier days, the population of the planet was small and spread out. As they concentrated and established new towns, utilizing plants more and more, allowing mankind to lengthen life spans and lower infant mortality some, there naturally was more commerce and travel. Occasionally Vanessa would spot someone traveling by toma or vehicle on the horizon. She would hit the sand, letting her pale cloak camouflage her against the sand, listening, panting, waiting for the sound of those travelers to dissipate. If an ill-meaning person or group came upon her, if they had a gun, if they used it before within range of her 'abilities' with the book, then what?

She kept her book ready in her holster. At each town, suspicious eyes followed her. Everyone was out to scam the traveler, who they only wanted to leave, since they weren't to be trusted. One day, Vanessa almost bought a large crucifix to hang outside her cloak, as maybe that would alleviate some of the fears, but she was quickly running out of funds. She needed money because she needed food. Yet she needed to be away from people because she needed to be safe from harm. This was quite a conundrum.

Luckily, Vanessa was a clever thing. A bolt of fine cloth, mass of thread, and a few weeks in the wilderness later, she had the answer. The best defense, she'd heard somewhere before, is a good offense.


	24. Cut By An Angel

A deep rumble alerted her that the caravan was on its way, but she knew she had time before they could see her. The ears she was cursed with were good for that much. She broke into a light jog toward the place she'd scouted instinctively upon arriving in the area, the place where she could hide from them, but near enough they would likely drive past. Heart pounding, she huddled down to the ground, pale cloak to camouflage her; Vanessa estimated the number of vehicles at ten or more. That was more than usual, and far more than she wanted.

Should she skip this one? Hide further out, safer, and give this one up? The risk was great that something would go wrong, what with so many vehicles and therefore so many people in this group. "This is crazy," she muttered as she wrapped her collapsed tent around her book of 'spells' and buried the bundle in a shallow hole.

The absence of a heavy load upon her shoulders reminded her of why it didn't matter how crazy it was. Dying of thirst would be perhaps more painful than a death at the hands of these people might be. No, she thought, as she tightened the cords on the back of her dress and tied them tightly, no, she didn't want to die. If she died, she would die fighting, and she would take at least half of this caravan to the reaper with her if it came to that.

Finally, it was too late for her to change her mind, as the heat-blurred trucks approached. Rocks and sand crunched beneath their heavily treaded wheels, their engines roaring with energy. There were twelve in all. The first, third, seventh, and eighth were clearly for security – burly men with guns leered out of the opened windows, craning thick necks for danger. Trailing a ways behind, eleven and Twelve were trucks with toma trailers attached, and the remaining seven were bus-trucks laden down with luggage, surely full of travelers and migrating families.

It would behoove her to rob one of those bus-trucks, but she wasn't that desperate. Twelve, that'd hopefully be her lucky number. The last car, with the toma trailer, would have to do. It'd surely have basic provisions for the drivers and the toma, and water at least. Vanessa took a few deep breaths to try to calm herself – she didn't have much energy left to expend. She hadn't eaten in over a week, and it'd been several days since she had water.

The trucks were half past and the dust kicked up by the wheels thickened the air. The sour smell of the toma hit her nostrils, alerting her that it was about time for her to get to work. Ten passed, and eleven passed a full ten car lengths later. The tomas' heads bobbed so you could see them in the open slats of the trailer sides. They'd been in there long enough on that hot day that the thing reeked something awful. Twelve was another ten car lengths behind eleven.

As twelve's cab pulled almost beside her, she stood abruptly, let her cloak fall to the ground, and called out, "help!" just loud enough that eleven wouldn't hear.

The driver hit the brakes, and as the man in the bed of the truck and the two men crammed alongside him in the cab joined his gaze, he licked his lips.

Her blood red dress was open up to the thigh on one leg, and cut so low and tight around the breasts the men thought they might spill out. Mouth open slightly, pale eyes squinted, shoulders bare with wide sleeves hanging at her sides, the woman stepped forward slowly, possibly limping. "Please help..."

One man pulled his bandanna from his face and hopped out of the truck bed. He grinned and walked to her, chuckling excitedly.

She stopped. Chest heaving, breasts swelling with the motion, she lifted her broad sleeve to block the sun from her eyes.

The man outside the car stood suddenly still. Another man opened the passenger door and stepped around the front. The man left in the cab with the driver slumped down, limp. The driver didn't see that, but when the man walking round the front of the car to the woman stopped walking and clutched his chest, crying out pitifully and then falling to the ground, the driver drew his shotgun from the floor. When the man from the truck bed crumpled to the ground with a hoarse wheeze, the driver brought the shotgun up to the window and leaned down to aim. The world spun out from under him, and he squeezed the trigger, blasting a hole through his door before falling onto his wheel.

Vanessa lowered her gaze from the intricate embroidered diagrams on her sleeve and let go a coughing fit. This caused the bruising over her right side to sting. Swallowing, she stepped cautiously toward the truck cab, bruises and a few cuts alerting her as her thighs rubbed against one another. She reached in past the men in the cab, ignoring the pile of weaponry on the floor and behind the seat. She grabbed three full canteens, taking a moment to finish one of them between coughs.

"Much better than last time," she reflected. Not her best either – living off the stolen goods of strangers was a wonderful solution for her, as it went off perfectly most of the time.

For the hundredth time she wondered how she'd messed up so badly last time, that she ended up with her dress torn, raped by both of the men while the woman watched scowling, all her supplies stolen away before the group drove off leaving her in their dust cloud, facedown in dirt.

This time - two heart attacks, a stroke, and a temporary coma. She ordinarily was not so harsh, but this was a desperate situation. Usually she'd put everyone into a heavy sleep, or a temporary coma, but that took longer than deadlier ailments. Mr. Coma would probably wake up just fine in a half a day, and be able to drive the other three to help. They may not die. She didn't check, though.

Taking a large backpack, she stuffed an emergency kit and meager rations into the bottom, and filled the rest with toma feed – gross, but it'd keep her alive. Pulling herself into the truck bed, she refilled the empty canteen from a barrel of dirty toma water. Vanessa stepped around the toma cart, rubbing her tired eyes as the tomas' heads bobbed inside. She wasn't eager to ride someone else's toma through the desert, with how sore she was to sit, but it'd be easier than going about on her twisted ankle.

Easing open the latch on the back door, she let it open on its own. It didn't really occur to her that these toma were amazingly quiet and clean-smelling as the slim door fell open, because she was stepping into the trailer, busy scanning the horizon over her shoulder. Her hands were at the handles of the doorway, pulling her into the darkness to chose a mount.

Wires tightened on her wrists and she instinctively pulled against them, stumbling onto one knee on the slick, clean floor of the trailer.

"Freeze."

Eyes adjusting from the noon of two suns to the dark of a toma trailer, she stared down the barrel of a large revolver. It was held at arm's length by a man seated in a plush pile of blankets and pillows below preserved toma heads hanging from the ceiling on wires. His other arm held tight the ends of the wires rigged to the handles. Sitting up on his cushions, the man wore finely tailored suit pants and a crisp white dress shirt unbuttoned a ways down his chest from the heat. Hair mussed but purposely so, his gorgeous dark eyes and chiseled jaw smiled beautifully at her. He was, perhaps, the most attractive man she had ever seen. So very so that she didn't even try to read her sleeves for a second or so, and of course once she thought to try she couldn't make it out anyhow.

"Who sent you?" he asked calmly. His voice was gentle and as lovely as his face.

"No one," offered, meeting his gaze since there was no lie to hide.

He didn't challenge that. "Are they dead," he asked as less of a question than as confirmation.

His face, his voice; he was simply enchanting. "Not entirely. One's just asleep," she went on, truthfully. Falling onto her knees and against her suspended arms, she launched into another coughing fit.

His grip on the wires didn't loosen at all – he actually took the chance to tighten them, dropping his revolver onto his lap to hold tight the wire with both hands. "You took out four of my best men without moving. How did you do it?" he asked.

Bringing her knees beneath her to keep the weight off her wrists, now bleeding, Vanessa stared down at some embroidery along her unexposed thigh. "I have talents."

The man felt his fingers, toes go numb; his limbs, suddenly he couldn't feel or move them. Shifting back onto his pillows, his confident smile never wavered. "Make me sleep. That's fine. You'll come to May and work for me. Every comfort-" He breathed in sharply, as it was becoming difficult to speak.

Yanking the wire from his hands, she snatched up his revolver and watched him go under the rest of the way.

"Need someone...like you. I'm head...of Blue Lion gang. Gavin," he whispered. A moment passed. He was unconscious, and alive.

Vanessa knelt still for a moment, staring at the sleeping angel of a man. Standing, she paused. She leaned over him and slowly reached her hand out to his face. A heavy drop of blood fell from her wrist onto the white shirt. Holding her hand to his cheek for a moment, she slid her fingers away, letting them brush against his soft lips, before stepping out of the trailer. She donned her new backpack and went for her cloak and book before disappearing into the desert again.


	25. Him

"3 and half yards muslin in navy, 2 spools regular, 20 spools embroidery thread, one pack needles, shears." The general store owner, a whithered man with small, round glasses, counted quietly on his fingers for a moment. "Sixty-four, then."

"Sixty-four!?" Taken aback, she pressed all the bills she had stolen from Gavin's men onto the counter. "Take pity on me, I have fifty-seven."

"Price ain't negotiable."

She dug deeper and found a few coins, which she added to the pile "I haven't got more."

He grunted again, sighed, and finally swiped the cash from the counter. The old man took his time sliding her purchase into a rough sack, handing it off to the woman in the cloak, who smelled of sweat and dust.

Vanessa stepped into the road of this small town, this quaint and quiet place. There was no plant, and there were only a dozen buildings here. Vanessa walked just a hundred feet west and stood at the edge of this town, staring into the hot, bright desert. Children shouted in play somewhere to her left. The soft flapping sound of hanging laundry accented the whistling breeze. Glancing to her side, she watched two young girls race after a ball. A boy of no more than 4 dashed after them, but tripped on a rock. He breathed in deeply, then let began to sob, grabbing for his foot. His wail cut into the serenity of this place.

It'd be wise for her to leave. She stepped briskly away, but the pitiful cries stopped her. She turned and stepped toward the injured little man.

"Who are you!?" an old, frightened voice called out. The old man stood there, shaking. "Back away from him – Nori, you ok?"

"He's fallen and hurt himself," Vanessa replied sternly, pushing back the hood of her cloak enough that the old man could see her face but not enough that he could see her cursed ears. "Nori, is it? Let me see that foot." The boy did as asked, lip trembling because he was scared of the stranger who felt at his leg bones and wiggled his ankle around.

Vanessa stood and stepped away from the boy. "It's a bruise, he's fine."

The middle-aged woman who'd appeared at the old man's side stared for a few moments, then smiled cautiously. Nori ran to tug at her dress and she pressed her hand to his head. "Daddy, you overreacted."

Already walking away, Vanessa pulled her pack up with her thumbs.

"Young miss, come have a meal. She looks awful weary, daddy; it's tough out there. Please, miss, come here."

Vanessa accepted, saying little as Nori's mother, Mei, introduced her to her son, her two daughters, and her very old daddy, Mr. Tombs. Mei insisted Vanessa have a meal with them, then insisted she help herself to a bath and to take an old dress of Mei's that was too small for her anymore and too short for Vanessa. Why not, Vanessa thought, having a mid-day meal, taking a long bath in their shed/bathhouse, changing into the ill-fitting but clean and modest dress instead of her rather dirty, red, sexy one. The used dress had short sleeves, and when Vanessa re-entered the small home to thank Mei and leave, Mei saw the swollen, infected cuts on Vanessa's wrists, and she practically demanded that Vanessa stay with them until those healed, on a cot in the attic. If she'd just help out around the house a little, Mei suggested, it was just no trouble at all, and she certainly wouldn't take no for an answer. And Vanessa did not fight it much, because she was tired and the usual level of anxiety and mistrust just didn't make sense at the time.

The coming days were quiet, as calm as the town. Vanessa made elixirs for Mr. Tomb's arthritis, carried water from the well so Mei wouldn't have to, and spent a good deal of time embroidering the not-yet-assembled pieces of the midnight blue dress she was making. Mei thought the girl was strange, but helpful, and certainly harmless, as Vanessa sat embroidering night and day on their back porch, singing the most haunting songs as the children sat nearby – but not too close by – to listen. The songs were the ones she heard at her birthplace, songs from the world before. For hours, Vanessa sat, softly singing and needling the thread into delicate, intricate patterns that Mei told her was a waste of her time. And when Vanessa was singing and sewing, she would sometimes close her eyes for a moment and she saw Gavin's face.

And when she slept, she dreamt of him. They had sex in that toma cart, she dreamed, there on the silky pillows, beneath the bobbing toma heads. His wavy, chocolate brown hair, brushing past his eyes, those dark, deep eyes – he was intoxicating and when she slept she became drunk on him.

As her wrist wounds healed, and one day were but scabs, she picked at them and imagined his lovely face as it was the moment he cut into her with wires. She didn't mind being cut into when it was done by that angel – that man.

Gavin.

Of the Blue Lion gang. In May.

He wanted her.

She hadn't been staying with the Tombs' but for a few weeks, and already she was bored and anxious. The company of children did not suit her, and the calm came to feel foreign and foreboding. Her dress was nearly complete, and she envisioned it complete, on her. It would be very classy and feminine. Sleek. He would fall for her instantly in a dress like this.

That is, if she went to him.

Because it was ridiculous, and she knew that. He wouldn't fall for her. Maybe he'd use her for a good time, then toss her out. And she'd never heard of a civilized gang – she didn't know that much about Blue Lion in particular, but no matter how gorgeous and refined Gavin appeared, there wasn't a chance his gang were gentlemen. She'd already met four of them, and how ever many of the four that survived would surely hate her so as to do horrible things to her should she step into their headquarters, or whatever gangs called it. Would Gavin protect her from them?

Well, he needed her, she reminded herself. He said that in a most genuine way, and he promised her "every comfort." Oh, he said it in that voice, that could boil her blood into steam no matter what the words - and whatever he meant by 'comfort' was surely better than a cot in an attic.

Vanessa sang to her embroidery and these child strangers, and all the while she cursed herself for being the fool she knew she was. She planned to be the fool who would go to his side, because she could not imagine living without that. It wasn't just that she wanted him - and make no mistake, she wanted him so very badly - it was that she felt strongly that he was like her. There was some connection there, some instant bond. She had been alone in the desert and alone in crowds for so long, the thought of a kindred spirit made her ache somewhere deep inside.

The dress was almost done. She'd be on her way after that.


End file.
